Dragonfish
by ContemplatingUnderland
Summary: He never meant to survive but, of course, heroes never listen.
1. From The Deep

Three young fools, figured themselves his rescuers. How quaint. He looked on from his place deep in the darkness, watching them gather in his thin limbs and tuck in his chin.

From the dark, always from the dark, he followed them with his eyes. He had given them his memories, gave Potter Dumbledore's final plan. The rest of history was theirs; what they pulled from the Shack had served its purpose. Yet, three heroes carry an empty shell, navigating the night to Hogwarts' entrance. He knew the path they tread. Further heroics were discussed over his remains: out through the Whomping Willow, through Hogwarts-littered with like corpses. They were bringing him to heel at Poppy's feet, hoping for miracles as they were wont to do.

It surprised him to find he'd miss that guileless optimism. Only the desperate alive had any use for it. The trio laid him out on the grass to readjust his awkward limbs and wrap him in his own robes. Keeping him warm, holding him together. It was Gryffindorish tenacity, raging against the inevitable.

So very admirable, and in the absence of most any other emotion besides the peace of the hereafter, he allowed himself time to bask in it. Just a few minutes, he told himself. The rest of his life. It was all he had to give them.

The spark of life left in him dimmed gradually faster, slipping out of him and into the air to become something like to feed other ghosts. Souls drifted into nothingness in every direction. The three fools ignored the play of intricate dying, their gazes fixed on the castle walls. The force of their combined will bound the last of his energy to bones and torn robes and blood. Instead of resigning, to anything, they cried and ran.

The reckless emotion of it all approached a climax as they ducked into Hogwarts' shadow. It inspired a small ache in him, one borne by the thread of himself that still reached through the veil and held on. That was the crux of it, really. The crux of dying: that one little thread made all the difference. That tiny thing kept him alive, despite the light bleeding out of him and soaking into the stones of the school, his home. Something thin and significant called "letting go", which taunted him because he didn't know how.

His rescuers were running so fast, suddenly. Too fast, and they were talking, to him-he could hear them: "Hold on, Snape, you right bastard. A few minutes, just fucking hold on."

Hold on. All he'd ever done; that was his problem. That and the fact that they were running too damn fast.

Wait, he thought at them, but they just ran on. Brats. _Idiots._ Insolent children rushing in, too self-righteous to spare him a moment for thought. They stole the peace right from under him. It was the story of his life, and it sent tremors through his very soul.

They didn't understand, and he had no way to tell them. He shook with the knowledge that, had he been able to teach them _one damn thing, _it would be the honor of dying. There was a deep pain to living that death would sooth, and he'd hurt for so long. He needed to be comforted. Security, finality, closure. He had needs written into the core of his being. He yearned for peace.

Urgent pain was carved into the scene before him, three children skidding into the infirmary with his body floating behind him, his pallor a pall. He wanted nothing to do with it. Poppy turned toward them and saw the gory collage of sallow skin and greasy hair.

And eyes, brown and blue and striking green, finally understood the mess they'd dragged in through the dark and, Merlin, the _agony _of living.

And it was as though a voice like flowers and swing sets and copper red hair whispered, "Not yet."

Panic licked up the ghostly approximation of his spine. He took in the wealth of spirit of his rescuers. Power enough to fell the greatest Dark wizard to date focused on him. Poppy Pomfrey herself was a resident wielder of miracles. Still, more facts accrued against his favor: the voice that commanded he lived belonged to the mother of the Master of Death. It was a conspiracy.

For the first time he wondered if Fate was a lioness.

He clung to the notion of death, even faced with his survival-if anything, he was a stubborn man. However, reaching the end meant letting go, and he'd never done that before. Not even once. He held on to every thing he'd ever touched. He stored them in the dark he'd known since childhood for safekeeping. Memories, emotions, grudges, promises, hoarded in the dark, surrounding him while he stood, watching a war worn matron pour life into his body like water.

The tiny thread of light grew heavy, steely. It weighed him down, wrapped around him, crushing him down smaller, smaller. The fury of his thrashing was inspired. Yet still, light burned through the veil, steady, defiant, opening a hole no bigger than the eye of a needle. Blinded by the brightness, he didn't see destiny shift forwards, his body twitching, his lungs inflating, breathing in the selfish prayers of captors.

On the other side, Poppy Pomfrey grabbed the line of life with both hands and reeled him in.


	2. The Unkindness

It was a muggy afternoon during his one summer of note, the one during which he took the Mark. He was seventeen-Merlin, he still went by Sev, then. Not often, mind, did one refer to the dour young man by that nickname. In fact, from that day onwards, he would be known only as Severus, Snape, eventually Professor-but that afternoon was Sev's last.

His flirtations with the Dark Arts demanded attention, payment, and he took another swig of what was essentially piss water. He recognized the beginning of his fall for what it was. Fortunately, the world at the end of his brown glass bottles didn't care that a deformation of the soul had finally been ushered forth by his curiosity. No, that dizzy world put all of its efforts into spinning.

Hence, he drank, feeling obliged.

Sev admitted to himself that he was a disappointment, even in his own mind. Full disclosure was the only promise he had left to make to himself, so dammit he'd be honest: he disgusted him. Wait, no. The man he would become, that man not unlike his father: that man disgusted him. He disappointed him, because he..._because he was so wretched_. Consumed with envy, humiliation and anger. In him, his father never died.

So why not imbibe? It was true to form, if anything. Par for the course, that he'd gone and sold his soul to the devil in him, the bastard: Death Eater.

How the fuck did one even eat death? The name didn't make any bloody sense-unless, of course, Death was a woman, redheaded maybe, in which case what a fine meal indeed. Ha, "Death Eater", if only. Had he eaten so well in all his life, he'd at least have been smiling as he sat there, shitfaced at the end of things. Or rather, shitfaced under the big oak in Cokeworth's Fetter Crown Park.

He snorted. It wasn't a park so much as a weedy lot, two ancient trees, a stone memorial bench or two, and history's Fetter Crown House, home to the founder of a miserable miller town north of nothing. He recalled, even in that dizzy brown world, that some committee or other petitioned for the house to be titled as a historical site-and so it was. Sev then noted, perhaps aloud, that the empty, sagging building had nothing to gaze upon with its dark windows besides himself and the scrawny Cokeworth ravens.

Sev figured he'd spent enough hours then thinking about his life as he'd lived it. Or not life, really. Survival, perhaps, described it best. Or existential torment. Shit luck, or...

The birds cawed and interrupted his thought. Or maybe he'd abandoned it. In any case, he drank.

"To the absolutely very end of me!"

And his was such a predictable end, too: thoroughly lacking creativity or deviation from his plot for self-destruction. He didn't grab for power, and was ambitious only in scholarly pursuits; for some time, he was eager in the duty of his sworn oaths. Otherwise, he was a bitter shade. Moreover, he knew himself well enough to know that he would hardly allow himself any kind pleasure. Cruel. It'd all be cruel. Cruel jokes, cruel hobbies, cruel smiles, most likely. He'd dress entirely in black and learn to scowl like his mother used to, and lie to people's faces, and to himself even.

So cruel.

Merlin, the whole world span.

He swayed, tilted his head back and drained his bottle. Then he reached for another, banished the cap. The bottle had other plans, though, sliding from his slack grip and toppling to the ground. His glassy stare could hardly be arsed to turn downward. Once he spotted the bottle, glugging away on its own, he huffed in amusement. The damned thing pissed away the last of his stash.

He watched the dirt drink his beer and soon, found himself unable to stop laughing. He shook and giggled because gods, even the poor Fetter Crown was looking to sooth his old, dead hurts. After a few minutes, the laughing stopped, and he half-expected an onset of despair. He surprised himself by not crying, and the humor melted from his face and settled back into one of vague, idle musing.

Drinking in the park in Cokeworth was at least an honest affair. While typical in the way of ruined youth, it revealed personal truths that were relevant to Sev's last hurrah. Yet, he wanted more. Sev needed a testimony to himself, a memorial-rather, a grave marker. He'd make one, since no one else would: a grand sepulcher, to remember him by.

He glanced around himself, taking inventory of his available rocks, twigs, weeds, leaves; bird shite, and about a dozen empty beer bottles, including Crown's and his own.

Ah, yes.

He could build a pyramid out of beer bottles and dead grass, paint it with white shite and petition the parks committee to declare it a piece of the town's history. It wouldn't take too much convincing on his part, seeing as the story of the town rounded up to thereabouts, anyway. With enough time, he could prepare a speech for the ceremony of his monument, about how he and Fetter Crown shared drinks and decided that his life would be Cokeworth, and that the thought was enough to kill him, that thinking it was killing himself, that killing himself seemed to be his agenda all along because what else was he doing, really, drowning in swill with ravens and dead founders and a past and a future like rolling testaments to the definition of unkindness.

Once upon a time, he thought, an unkind man wed an unkind women, and begot an unkind son in a town that was likewise. This unkind boy met one, sweet girl who hurt to think about; who didn't last because he was so unkind. Without her, quite a few peers beat him, or let him beat himself, because they, too, were unkind. Then there stood, looming above them all, a thing of the Dark, made of snakes and skulls and festering wounds, that plagued his nightmares and preyed on his sleepless rage, and all of them, including the man he would be, cawed like another great gathering of ravens hungry for a feast of his entrails.

A few more ravens alighted in the branches overhead, looking down.

He left Crown's upturned bottle to decant and opened a new one, for himself, to toast old Fetter Crown and poor Snape men. He gave a bloody brilliant euology, as well: "To the poor sods who never got a chance," or some variation of the same. He swallowed a mouthful of piss, then grimaced at the taste. Gah, the near feverish warmth of it hitting the rest in his stomach with a splash. Ugh.

For a few minutes, there was only the wet slap of meager breakfast on yellow grass; clear bile, sourness; heaving, panting. Swearing, eventually, and the stupid calling of ravens. Or maybe they were laughing, at him.

He could use a good laugh, he mused. Something, anything, it didn't even need to be funny. He just needed to laugh at it.

Years later, he'd come to find amusement in the suffering of others, emulating the harsh unkindness of Cokeworth ravens. His would be their beady glares and how they seemed to look on him with such amused content. As a grown man, while others would swear that he'd been exorcised of any semblance good humor, even then he'd value, above all else, a hearty laugh.

Certainly, his enjoyment of others pain and discomfort made him a contemptible bully, even twenty years past seventeen. However, his schadenfreude, such as it was-some would call it sadism-was transparent, honest in the style of Snapes and Cokeworth ravens: pain was funny because it was all there was, in any direction, and everything hurt but he had to laugh some time.

That was it, then, Sev told himself. Laugh at the hurting of others. Try to hide your own hurt, to avoid being laughed at. That was life.

Finally, the young man noticed that the ravens gathering in the tree he had been using for support, instead of squawking at each other, were doing so at him. Faster than the alcohol should have permitted, he aimed a curse at the closest one, nailing it in the wing.

With an awful noise, his avian audience fled the tree in a storm of black flapping and cawing. One wretched creature came crashing down from the tree to the stone bench a few meters away. It thrashed and flailed, flinging itself less than its own height from the bench to the ground. That practically negligent second height proved merciless, however, when the raven, with the full force of its panic, fell from it and broke its own wing.

He'd remember, for years afterwards, the sight of the injured bird thrashing on the ground in counterpoint to the disquiet of its fleeing conspiracy. He'd return to the memory, countless times, including on his near-death bed, finding in it a brutally clear view of himself. A great black bird, injured by him, crippled by himself, and in the end, abandoned by his unkindness.

"Stop that," said the man, Severus, the effigy of Sev, to the bird he'd just cursed. Still, the bird flailed until it knocked itself out against the stone. An idea conceived itself then, while the man lay still in a drunken stupor, in his own vomit in the shade of his favorite tree.

_Better than a pyramid of beer bottles._

Over the years, he covered himself in that idea: in pieces, he carved his tombstone. When he had the time and money, and the privacy to heal, he expanded on it. In the evenings, when he undressed and the yards of black cloth slid off, he examined his memorial in silence. When he felt weak, he stood before the full length mirror in his quarters-one of the only non-magical items he still owned. His eyes, roving over his own thin body, bespoke a wordless sermon. Arduously, he hid his testimony to himself, as it grew, because to do besides would be "highly inappropriate" for places of work and indentured servitude. Murder was acceptable, and torture, a performance, but his black shrine was the most intimate truth he had to his name.

It wasn't even finished, and yet, when they peeled back his robes to tend to his wounds, they exposed said unfinished psyche.

* * *

The room stuttered. Even Madam Pomfrey, who'd seen the better part of it-once or twice since its meager beginning-started. Severus lay oblivious to the effect of his Unkindness. He did, however, manage choke out a few syllables: two, in fact.

"Stp tha," he said, half-strangled from trying to breathe, cough, and address a fatal flaw in his audience all at once. Somehow, even when mostly dead and wholly unconscious, the Potions Master could command a desired outcome. The illusion of control was astounding, even at times to a mucid rattle, he breathed one full breath, then another. There were no more words from him. Still, the gaping stopped, if far slower than it started.

The three Gryffindors shared more wide eyed glances between them.

Hermione furrowed her brow, an expression that threatened to stick. Ron shifted his weight about, looking through the gaps in Pomfrey's bustling to catch more glimpses of the black it. Harry, from his position at Snape's bedside, held the best vantage point for peering down the length of the Death Eater's torso.

Dark ink with very few patches of bone white skin, bloodless except for the drying stains of the attack; the flow of lines suggested that there was even more yet to be seen. The portrait from what he saw seemed so striking that Harry stepped back to avoid being underfoot. He didn't want to be shooed from the ward before he could understand what he was seeing. So from a distance he watched the dark thing it was, it had eyes: furious, animal eyes. It glared up at them from the man's narrow chest, and when Harry stared back, the thing lunged at him.

Snape pulled in a massive breath, sending himself into a coughing fit so violent it had him arching off the bed. The monster on his body thrashed with him, creating the illusion of a desperate, tortured creature with eyes that bore into Harry with such accusation that the young hero could barely stand for all he was shaking.

"Harry. _Harry._" His body jerked sideways; he was being shooed. Its eyes followed his movement. "Mr. Potter, honestly!"

_Potter! _is what he heard, hissed, ringing in his ears. That _thing _on his chest knew his _name_.

"Mr. Potter, wait outside if you can't make yourself useful. I haven't the patience!" More hands shoved him away from the bedside, though he and the animal were of locked gazes. "Professor Snape will live, child, if you leave me to my work."

Over his shoulder came a sharp, "Miss Granger, if you would." He didn't hear her respond, so she probably nodded. Then in two shakes, he was being lead by the elbow from the ward.

Between his changing point of view and Snape's convulsions, the monster finally let him go. It turned its damning eyes to Ron. He knew from his posture: the tall ginger stood at the foot of the bed, hunched over and frozen all over in shock. He was too far away to notice any trembling. Harry he tried to catch his eye, to ask if somehow he felt it, too.

He watched Hermione's face in his periphery, wanting to ask the same. She kept shaking her head, as if to clear it, and her gaze jumped from the floor, to over her shoulder and the ward behind. Her hand was steady on his arm-she hadn't succumbed to the shakes. However, some fit of nerves haunted her eyes. The black of her pupils overwhelmed the brown, and she had the appearance of a trapped animal, seeing the cage.

Just then, Harry felt between his best friends the passing of a chilly knowledge: they'd overstepped their bounds. For that, Snape had cursed them.

He had cursed them all from the very bottom of his heart.


	3. In The Dark

_Between his changing point of view and Snape's convulsions, the monster finally let him go. It turned its damning eyes to Ron. He knew from his posture: the tall ginger stood at the foot of the bed, hunched over and frozen all over in shock. He was too far away to notice any trembling. Harry he tried to catch his eye, to ask if somehow he felt it, too._

_He watched Hermione's face in his periphery, wanting to ask the same. She kept shaking her head, as if to clear it, and her gaze jumped from the floor, to over her shoulder and the ward behind. Her hand was steady on his arm-she hadn't succumbed to the shakes. However, some fit of nerves haunted her eyes. The black of her pupils overwhelmed the brown, and she had the appearance of a trapped animal, seeing the cage._

_Just then, Harry felt between his best friends the passing of a chilly knowledge: they'd overstepped their bounds. For that, Snape had cursed them._

_He had cursed them all from the very bottom of his heart._

* * *

A decision had to be made. Harry turned the vial over in his pocket, wondering what to do next. If Snape lived, obviously he'd want them back? Was he still meant to see them?

Snape and a few other critical cases were separated from the rest of the infirmary by a wall of sterile white curtains. Professor Flitwick had conjured the wall and assured the mediwitch of its purpose in preserving some sense of privacy. Harry had half a mind to turn back into the makeshift emergency ward and return the vial, if only out of respect.

The silvery essence of Snape's past: surely returning it to its owner would, like the curtains, leave something to the man's discretion. Harry need only part them, call Pomfrey over, or even leave it on a nearby table and be done with it. Granted, that might mean meeting the gaze of the man's tattoo. Were returning the memories worth that?

Furthermore, did he really care for Snape's privacy, or was he just unwilling to take the next step forward? The front ward was full of moaning injured; the Great Hall was lined with the dead. Seeing Snape's last message could very well turn the tide of the war.

Harry found himself at a crossroads: heed his fears and return the vial, or take it to the Pensieve in the Headmaster's office. _Just like before, "save Snape or leave him to die"-Merlin, it was like a choose-your-own-adventure book. "If you wish to save the greasy git, turn to page 394."_

It wasn't lost on him that his last executive decision led him directly to the present. The memories of the hook-nosed Death Eater held a different weight now, given what the man would do to him in a fit of embarrassed rage. The vial grew clammy with his body heat.

"I should watch them."

"Hm?" Hermione looked up from her hands, folded in her lap. "Did you say something, Harry?"

His throat stuck closed. He tried for a bit to speak-but speaking would make it real-before giving up and shaking his head.

Snape had wanted to tell him something in his final moments. He knew that. The Potions Master must have known in advance that Voldemort would murder him to gain control of the Elder Wand. He'd defeated Dumbledore; Voldemort need only defeat him to meet his ends-even Harry could see that. Years of experience _must _have taught him that the madman he'd served would think nothing of feeding him to his snake. Snape had known what memories to share, prepared them, and forced them on him. He'd written one final message to his master's greatest enemy.

"_Look at me."_

He _knew _he was going to die.

Granted, the deadly turn of their meeting had shocked Harry himself-as did the mess left behind-but Snape wasn't him. Snape thought ahead. He had plans within plans, that snake.

And yet, despite all that planning, the man couldn't save himself. He needed them to do it for him. As if a Potions Master couldn't brew an anti-venin. A practiced duelist, unable to defend himself against an animal? How was that even possible?

"_Look at me." _

It wasn't possible in the least.

_He knew._

"Hermi-" His voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again. "Snape-" Mentioning the name had a dramatic effect on his friend's posture. She snapped to attention, then deflated just as quickly, her face screwed up with intense emotion. Anger, maybe, or deep existential upset. Fear? Guilt?

_Oh God, is she crying? _Harry panicked, and pat her shoulder with his free hand. He couldn't take her crying, not now. He needed her to be stronger than him.

"C'mon, don't do that."

"No, you don't! Don't-" she flapped her hands in his general direction, face still scrunched in. He pulled his hand back, shocked, a little hurt, but mostly relieved. His poor hand could stand being turned down if Hermione didn't cry. "Just don't Harry. I don't need consoling, just I- we- t-there's nothing..." she took a steadying breath, blinking hard.

"There's nothing we can do about it now," she said, holding his gaze. Her face dared him to argue.

On instinct, he nodded. Honestly, he had no idea what he'd agreed to, but the witch seemed to grow firmer when he did. Her gathered composure soothed some of his own panic. Then she took his hand, either for his sake or her own. It didn't matter. For a moment, they sat hand-in-hand, looking over the infirmary, thinking.

With a wet sniff, she let him go and climbed to her feet. Then faced the white curtains, murmuring about being right back. Weaving through the other beds, she seemed to be arguing with Ron about dallying even before slipping away. A second after she'd disappeared, he thought to send the memories in with her.

"Shite." The vial wasn't going anywhere on its own. Alone, he worried the vial's rubber stopper with his thumb, staring into the middle distance.

_I should just watch them,_ he thought, but recalled fifth year and the disastrous Occlumency lessons. It was two years since, a different era entirely. Snape hurled a jar at cockroaches at his head, for one glimpse into one memory. Merlin knew what the vial held: a harsher memory? An entire lifetime, even?

It could just be one conversation, but did he want to chance it being more? To tip into a basin of Snape's memories and find himself anywhere in the twisted landscape of the man's life? He vaguely remembered arguing parents and a skinny kid cowering in the corner. What if there was more of that? Or more examples of his father's schoolboy cruelty?

He wouldn't put it past Snape to make his last act on earth to be reminding Harry that he'd come from arrogance.

Still, he'd hardly want to know his best friend so intimately, much less Snape. Unfortunately, a decision had to be made, and he hadn't much more time for deliberation. He licked his lips; his mouth was bone dry, so it hardly did him any good. Harry did it again, anyway.

Finally, he stood, tightening his grip on the vial. Moving from his corner of the room, he headed for the nearest student helper, who turned out to be a member of the DA. He tapped them on the shoulder with an "Excuse me?" to draw their attention.

_I can do this._

They turned. "Ye-" Michael Corner's brow furrowed upon seeing him. Harry wondered if it was a sign, a bad omen-"_the_ _Grim!"-_before discarding the thought. "Sorry. Yes, Harry?" Michael's whole countenance was grim, bringing his anxieties creeping back.

No. He'd made his choice.

"When Hermione comes back, could you tell her I've gone to the Headmaster's office?" He forced a smile, for good measure.

Michael set his jaw and nodded with a jerk of the head. The movement tossed his long, black fringe into his face. Harry started at the sudden resemblance, though he couldn't place it, then mentally shook himself for being distracted and made for the double doors.

"Thanks," and he was gone.

* * *

Ron Weasley lay back against the hospital pillows, hugging his middle and reeling at what he'd just agreed to. Pomfrey had asked while he was still wrapping his head around Snape's bloody chest; he'd consented without hearing the question.

_"Huh? Yeah." And then, "Wait, no_ _what?" _before the panic set in.

Since the mediwitch had ordered him to a bed and asked, again, for his consent, he realized that by having nodded once, he'd only look the hypocrite for refusing now. The older woman assured him that he maintained the right to refuse, and that any agreement while distressed was best ignored if he were truly opposed.

Frankly, the term "opposition" lacked the stomach-turning reluctance with which he'd agreed the second time. However, no past guilt rivaled what he felt while being eyed by the Death Eater's body art. The viscosity of the emotion accompanying the painted scorn could be physically felt. So much so, he'd choked on it. He'd, in fact, gone so pale that Madame Pomfrey barked at him to _lay down _before she lay him down to sleep; she'd claimed to have seen straight through to his skull.

"If not for it, Mr. Weasley, I'd have thought you a ghost." And didn't the castle have ghosts to spare?

Ron doubted he'd ever be free of such damning guilt-if not of the actual emotion, then of the memory of it. He was effectively cursed with it, and knowing that enraged him to the point of wanting to do more out of spite. He'd show that greasy git a curse, one of grudging heroism. Let him wake up knowing he owed his life to a Weasley: in his mind, a flawless logic.

"Ronald!" Hermione marched toward him, then slowed to edging past the Death Eater eclipsed by Pomfrey's robes. "Ronald, why are you _napping?_ Harry needs our help."

"'Mione, I'm-" She took on a look of concern, even posed with hands on hips. "Snape needs-and I'm-Pomfrey asked if...Oh Merlin's bloody bollocks, I'm going to vomit."

A dented, metal bucket came to his bedside.

"Mr. Weasley, you are to rest. Miss Granger, please refrain from working Mr. Weasley into a panic, as he's doing Mr. Snape a charitable service."

"Ma'am?"

"_Sit_, young lady, until I've the attention to spare."

Hermione filled the visitor's seat beside him, looking from the mediwitch to the ginger curled up under the sheets. She started rubbing Ron's back, perhaps to sooth, but the action soon became fussing with his sheets and pillows. Eventually, even that was abandoned in favor of blatant staring: at Pomfrey's moving behind, swishing wand and potions pouring. The young witch catalogued every action, out of habit. Whatever details she'd noticed seemed to agitate her further-she bit her lip, some, and drummed her fingers on her chin.

Seeing it as a distraction from his nausea-amongst other things-Ron watched her watch Pomfrey, until the mediwitch's activity reached a stopping point. Madam Pomfrey leaned over her gaunt patient, and set to poking and prodding to tested her spell work. A thick lattice of scar tissue bound the torn edges of Snape's throat. The tissue gleamed pale gray and bloodless, a testament to the necessity of Ron's reluctant donation. Judging her work as passable, the elder witch regarded them with thin patience.

"Mr. Weasley, do you feel well enough to continue?"

His forgotten nerves returned, but with Hermione there, gripping his shoulder, he figured himself as mentally prepared as he'd ever be. "I-yes. I'm ready to get this over with, er, ma'am."

"Wonderful," said with no little sarcasm. "Now, if you'd be so kind as to lay back, we shall begin. Yes, Miss Granger?"

"He's stopped breathing, ma'am." Ron jumped, thinking she meant him. He made it a few inches off the bed only to be held back by Pomfrey's iron grip on his shoulder.

"I am aware of that, as I'm the one to have stopped it." His eyes bugged, even more so when Hermione nodded as if she'd expected that were the case. Then his brain caught up to the conversation. "A full body stasis was the only way to stop the bleeding and draw out the venom, especially given all his thrashing about. He nearly killed himself thrice since waking." She gesticulated so forcefully as to unbalance herself.

In a manner unlike any student's experience with the stiff-lipped matron, she stumbled, and had to grip the headboard of Snape's bed for support. Hermione jumped to her aid, offering Pomfrey her chair. Ron reached out to steady her, vaguely reminded of doing the same for his own mum. The older woman refused the seat-"I'm fine, child, fine. Sit!"-and shook him loose with a stern pat on the wrist. She then drew the curtains around Snape's bed, effectively hiding him, and set straight to checking Ron's vital signs.

"I've survived this world long yet, a bit of a tumble hardly matters." She pushed Ron down a second time when he'd leaned forward, trying to help. "Don't mind me, Mr. Weasley, or else your heart rate will shoot up and I'll be forced to check it again. Lay _down _or I will tie you down. _Miss Granger_, do sit, I'm fine."

Tutting under her breath about foolish children, though not unpleasantly, she put her wand through a few, curt maneuvers over the whole of Ron's upper body. Numbers wrote themselves in the air above him, in no discernible order except for color coordination: yellow spells made for yellow numbers, purple for purple, green for green and so on.

With the conclusion of a final spell-bronze as a new Knut-and a cryptic reading of "29/10", Pomfrey, business-like as ever, tucked away her wand and sent Hermione to her office in search of a "navy-blue duffle about the size of a house cat" and two furled scrolls.

"The duffle should be on the floor of the cupboard behind my desk, while the scrolls should be on the desk itself. Quickly, now, if you please, before Mr. Weasley succumbs to the vapors."

Soon enough, she had her bag and scrolls, and Ron was forced to confront what his earlier decision. He knew, on some level, that he'd regret helping later on-he still believed that Snape would've done best dying in the Shrieking Shack, horrible as it sounded. However, he'd dedicated himself to saving the git's life and Weasleyswere nothing if not honorable. To think: a blood donation,_ with his blood, _in Snape, the Death Eater, murderer of Albus Dumbledore, traitor to the Order, bane of Gryffindors throughout history-the world had come to anarchy, without a doubt.

_I suppose, now, it's just saving who you can, _he thought, catching a glimpse of a filthy sleeve and a stained left hand framed by white drapery.

* * *

Harry eyed the pool of smoky silver, hands wrapped around the edges of the basin. A drop of sweat tickled the hairs on the back of his neck. He reached with a sleeve bunched in one hand, agitated, scrubbing his neck all the way around, then his collar bone, then his forehead. The action had broken his stand off with the Pensieve, and he vibrated with anxious energy. Now, alongside the fear of the unknown was a morbid curiosity. What could possibly he find?

"I can do this_._" Using the momentum of his declaration, he plunged face first into the memories.

* * *

"There, all done, and better for it." Madam Pomfrey cleaned his arm again and closed the puncture wound. "I usually wouldn't, you understand, but Mr. Snape has a terrible allergy to Blood Replenishing potions, and I wouldn't waste efforts on reviving the man if I'd planned to fell him in the same breath."

"Who the hell has an allergy to _Blood Replenisher_?"

"Language, Mr. Weasley!"

"Ronald,_ honestly_."

Needles-awful, thin, prickly needles-in his skin because one arsehole couldn't take a bit of potion. Ron would sooner kiss the man than believe in a Potions Master with a potions allergy. _As bloody if. _

"Can't the man have a normal allergy, like to pumpkin juice or owls, even? What is he allergic to air,too?" He jabbed a finger at the curtained bed. "Does he have a _people _allergy, that rotten git?"

"Mr. Weasley, control yourself." He was pushed into the hospital bed for about the fifth time-or even the sixth, given the blood letting was rather hectic. "I understand that needles are no friend to wizards, but I can't abide by yelling in my infirmary. You are to recover for another ten minutes, and then Miss Granger may see you out, if you aren't to help tend to the injured. Make note: I doubt the man developed a rare allergy just to frustrate you. I'm sure he'll be as distressed by this turn of events in due time just as you are now."

She straightened herself, fixed her robes, and after checking his vitals once more, moved to tend to the other man with the sack of his blood. He nearly heaved with the depravity of it. He should have thought more on his decision. He should have refused and left it at that. Giving blood disturbed him, as it did the great majority of British wizarding society. It was horribly Muggle, and not because it was nonmagical or used methods denoting the deeply sadistic nature of Muggle medicine.

Sharing blood outside of family purposefully ignores the fact that blood is more than blood: it is life, power, and basis of old magic. The Darkest Arts used the blood of enemies and sacrifices, willing and otherwise. Even animals knew the power of blood; even monsters. Yet Muggles could go about swapping it amongst themselves, out of compassion, sure, but with strangers? Only non-wizards would be so careless, and yet there he was, a good deal less full. He wasn't even allowed Replenisher in case she needed more.

It was practically vampirism, living off of another's blood, however willingly given.

Ron had heard stories from his brothers of hybrid creatures and lost magic, disrupted family lines and witches giving birth to the alien babies because of sharing blood. His father was more transfixed by gadgets than medicine, so he'd had no information to the contrary. All those horror stories came rushing back to him in what he would later say was perfect clarity. He'd only Pomfrey's assurances that these stories were only that, and that Snape would be no more his brother after the procedure than he was before.

He'd wanted to save the man's life. Still, as he'd predicted, Ron came to regret his decision. The whole situation bespoke something truly, deeply, universally _wrong. _

_Who has an allergy to Blood Replenisher? It's made to suit all types._

* * *

Harry stood over the Pensieve, watching the memories in it swirl around each other. There should be some indication that a memory was best left alone, he thought. Some should be a darker silver than others, tarnished as they were. Some should swirl faster, or hiss, or sink to the bottom of the stone bowl to avoid being reached.

That Snape had...

And Dumbledore...

"_You've raised him like a pig for slaughter." _

He groaned and rubbed his eyes. For a moment, he was overcome with the urge to overturn the Pensieve, spill the whole of Snape's childhood and Dumbledore's games to the floor, to let them soak into the carpet like unicorn blood; to let them live forever there, or decay, or do whatever memories do when they're unwanted. The moment passed, though, and he was cold in its wake.

"_Don't tell me you've come to care for the boy."_

"_You've raised him like..."_

He knew his next move. He'd always suspected, though it was quite another thing to have a suspicion confirmed. He closed his eyes and felt the pressure in his head, from holding off Voldemort, or to some extent, trying not to cry. He surprised himself by not crying, though it was probably for the best. If he started now, he'd never stop.

He left the full Pensieve on the desk for the next person-McGonagall or whoever-to pick up. The idea of the misplaced Pensieve comforted him, at least a little. It would serve as proof that Harry had been there. Secretly, he hoped it stayed there, out of place.

* * *

"Alright, both of you, out of my ward. You're free to go."

They nodded their understanding and made for the door. Hermione gauged her-Ron's-expression. He'd been solemn and mostly silent since they'd watched Madam Pomfrey set up the transfusion. When she'd released the stasis and the first of the blood dripped, Ron shot out of the bed. With no one to stop him, he dashed as fast as he'd dared through the white partition. She apologized on his behalf and hurried after.

He hadn't said a word besides a shaky, "Where's Harry?" and she, seeing the empty bench in the corner, admitting to not knowing. His grunt had worried her more than the silence. Why'd he agree to donate if he was so-

_When is he ever weak at the sight of blood? _

God, what if he was sick? And for that matter, who has ever had an allergy to Blood Replenisher?It was suited for all types; she'd told Ron as much herself, once upon a time.

_Something isn't right. _

From her left, someone called her name. Michael Corner came rushing up to them, passing along a message from Harry to say he'd gone to the Headmaster's Office.

"Why?"

"For a Pensieve, Ron." Dammit, how could she have forgotten? The memories, Snape's memories, of _course_. "We have to find him, to make sure he's okay."

His response of "Why wouldn't he be-" fell short when the doors to the infirmary let in a throughly winded Ginny.

"We need...Pomfrey," Ginny gasped, clearly having run the entire distance to the Hospital Wing.

"What's wrong?" Ginny shook her head, waving her arms about, trying to sign her message. "What's happened? Is someone hurt? Has someone-"

"Give her time to breath, Hermione." This came from Michael, who then pointed towards the emergency section. "She's in there."

Ginny gave him a smack on the shoulder in passing, then ran, legs pumping, and slid into the white ward. Ron turned green at the suggestion of following her in, thus Hermione waited with him in the fore. Half a minute later, Pomfrey stomped out of the ward with a shaking Ginny on her heels. While Pomfrey walked on out the doors, snapping orders to her assistants to continue as they were, the youngest Weasley headed for her brother. She jarred them both with the force of her hug, gripping him around the waist and holding on.

They waited for a bit, with her head buried in his shoulder before seeing she'd no intention of lifting it, and asked again.

"What happened, Gin?"

Ron's shirt muffled her answer.

"Didn't quite catch that, Gin, could-"

"The G-great Hall is full," her look vulcanized the air and she spat the news as though hardly believing it herself. "It's full."

* * *

Poppy stood, in the towering threshold of the Great Hall, with a medical bag by each foot. They'd fallen with a great _whump__! _just before, drawing the attention of several of the room's closer occupants. With theirs came the attention of those behind them, and so on in a great ripple backwards to the arched windows and the teachers' dais: eyes, turning to meet hers: an audience twice large as it should've been.

Students and teachers, Order members and Aurors, some, watched her walk into the murmuring crowd, and parting in such a way as to guide her towards the acting Headmistress. She shook her head at the grave, stunned, masked terror of the other woman, because it simply wasn't possible, none of it, and yet the Hall was full of people._ Living_ people. Every person she'd declared dead had shaken off death like a layer of frost and risen to meet her.

It wasn't until Minerva took her by the wrists and asked that she calm herself did she realized her face was wet with tears and that she, a woman going on sixty, had been whimpering like child lost from her mother.

* * *

**AN: I've tendency of going back and editing chapters after they're posted. There are never any _major _changes, so don't worry about continuity or anything. Just a heads up that some things get expanded on in the backtracking, in case you're curious. Again, nothing huge. **

**Also, feel free to review, as it tells me whether the story is coming across well. Ta! **


	4. Hands

Midnight struck in the many worlds. At least, this appeared to be the case. All of Hogwarts' working clocks chimed in rounds. There were too many to be set to the minute by a Squib like Filch, so each one heralded its own pocket of time. Every time piece rang twelve times over: twelve times twelve, some louder than others. Some were even a minute or two behind, but unfailingly, they rang.

Midnight in the Great Hall descended on the crowd as a clamor of silence now filled with ringing. Minerva stood with one arm pulling her colleague in close and watched the dark ceiling, as though it held a reprieve. Still, with a certain coldness, the clocks clanged away, echoing each other. Poppy had both hands over her mouth, keeping in the sounds she couldn't help.

Even for a wizarding school full of ghosts, the noise of May 2nd haunted. The living and the once-dead shared similar thoughts, then: never, in all their careers in Hogwarts, had they ever heard time so clearly.

In the dungeons, the Slytherins shifted about restlessly, like stabled horses before a storm. Pansy Parkinson had gone white with terror, though the chiming clocks could barely be heard above the noise of her housemates. Only the grandfather clock in the common room bothered to even creak; yet she watched its ancient face over the heads of the lower forms.

With both hands on twelve-a few on twelve oh one-eventually, the unwelcome fanfare of the day trailed off. The Hospital Wing waited, primed for Voldemort's next message. His high, cold voice had the young and injured in tears. More common were those capable of shouting who did so, mussing their makeshift beds with pillow throwing and yanking down of curtains.

DA members made the rounds, trying to restore order where none would be had. Ron didn't know whether to be surprised that a few turned to Ginny for instructions, which she gave as readily as anyone. Hermione also gave in to her managerial instincts, giving priority to patient care and securing the wing.

"Until Madame Pomfrey returns, we're on unofficial lockdown." She rebraided her hair and began reinforcing the wards. She cast spells and drew runes with a deftness honed by months on the run. "One look says they can barely defend themselves. They'll need as much help here as we can give. In the event of a siege, we're the last line of defense."

She worried, he knew, about Harry up in the Headmaster's office. Their savior had been called to center stage; the panic in the infirmary would keep them from him indefinitely.

"I don't want him out there alone, Ron, but-"

"Yeah." He wiped the cold sweat off his face and settled into rhythmic work.

* * *

His hands were steady as he shepherded the memories back into the vial. He'd learned the spell from the weeks of watching Dumbledore do the same. His mentor still had something to teach him, even now.

_Except how to defend myself. _Harry knew now that the old man never had the intention of seeing him through the war. The emotional distance and long silences made sense, in retrospect: stoicism; just an old man needing to preserve himself and isolate the weight of his responsibilities. Harry supposed he could understand the impulse, though he wasn't feeling charitable enough to try. Instead, he focused all of his strength on his one-man march to meet his death.

Elapsed time failed to penetrate his emotional detention. His frame of reference moved suspended in the willful antithesis of despair. His mind ran in reverse, through the summary of his life like a backwards movie reel. Vague recollections of green light coincided with his arrival to the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Sinking into the shadows of the dark treeline punctuated his final thoughts.

Time had run out before he could say his goodbyes. He'd failed Hermione to some extent. And Ron. Ginny, as well-guilt nipped at him for remembering her last. The detour to save Snape had cursed him in more ways than one. Now, he would end like the shot in the dark.

He dug the Golden Snitch out from the pouch around his neck.

"_I'm going to die."_

Unfortunately, devastatingly, another commotion of death drew the attention of the many summoned phantoms elsewhere. When Harry glanced around himself into the Forbidden Forest, he saw nobody but his mother, framed by the trees with her eyes deep with emotion. The sight of her made it easier to breathe, somehow. He almost sobbed with gratitude for the warm security that suffused his chest and limbs.

"Mum?"

"Oh, Harry. My poor, sweet baby boy."

"I'm scared, Mum." His voice cracked at seeing her face, as if to say "Such a shame."

"I know, lovey. You've done so much."

The short walk to the Killing Curse was ignorant of a world outside the woods. It was midnight here, still-too many immortal things in one wood had long since created a sinkhole of time. Even though it'd only taken minutes to reach the clearing, the company of his mother impressed upon him the passing of an eternity. She didn't touch him, though she seemed to take a deal of effort on her part. He felt tempted to ask why that was-why she couldn't so much as ruffle his hair-but he didn't need an answer as much as he did her presence. On some level, in the part of him living in a dusty cupboard under the stairs, he craved her presence in whatever form it came. He cherished each, long-short second.

When he finally stood in attendance of Voldemort's mad glee, she moved infinitesimally closer: she chilled his fringe, slick against his forehead with sweat and grime. As his murderer raised his wand, she finally pressed into the space between his shoulder blades. His feet rooted to the forest floor, he leaned with the faint force of her hand, effectively bowing at the waist. Voldemort was shocked into laughter and paused in his act of murder.

"Humility, Harry? At this juncture, I'm afraid begging for your life will do you little good. Though please, feel free to _grovel._ It'll complement my success quite nicely."

His mother scoffed. "You can tell him to get stuffed."

"...Mum?"

"Listen to your mother, dear."

Partially out of shock but more so having adopted the cavalier attitude of the dead, Harry did just that. If Voldemort possessed humanity enough to flush purple with rage, Harry supposed he would have then. Instead, Tom Riddle responded the only way he could. Green light hurtled towards the bowing Harry Potter. From his right, he heard his mother's voice: "I'll tell him you're on your way."

Stepping up from his left, the silhouette of a great, black dog watched the spell eject his soul through his back and throw his body to the ground. Harry Potter left the earthly realm, and the Dark Lord stood triumphant. The dog, vigilant in its own right, awaited the boy hero's return.

* * *

Lily took a moment to collect herself. In one hand, she held the leash to her son's soul. It manifested as such things do as a thread of burning white light. She'd seen more of such threads in one night than she was used to seeing in the two decades since her own death. Before this May 2nd, she could count on one hand the number of lifelines she'd touched: her child's, which felt familiar now in a way most others never could; his godfather's, at one point; James', then her own.

Yet, in one night, she'd lead all manner of friend and ally by a line of light-she'd never been trusted with those of her enemies. One after another, mentors and children of friends came to her to be ferried across to the hereafter. Of course, ferrying wasn't her job, either-that belonged to the young man she was meant to visit. Truthfully, there wasn't a name for what she'd become except Lily.

She ran her forefinger along the length of light in her palm. Then taking it in a firmer grip, she began her trek to the Hill of the Hereafter. On its peak, a young man drank and smoke in an old tree; occasionally, he chuckled at something he saw.

She shrunk and deaged as she approached him. Time worked relative to the master of the memory. Hence, the further up the hill she climbed, the slimmer she became, now free of the thickness of childbirth. Her chest shrank, as did her hips. Her hair thinned-bearing Harry had done wonders for its health. Her hands thinned out, and her elbows grew into awkward protrusions, yet shedding years of stress removed the sleeplessness from her eyes. Lily smiled with her old body, like returning to a childhood home. Things she'd forgotten came rushing back.

Still, she'd always been built for this. Even in life, during the years when the hill could only be visited in her memory, somehow her body never forgot the climb. Sure enough, her center of gravity shifted, and the trek took less compensation. She enjoyed it, briefly, before remembering business and scrambling for the top. Standing with surer footing at the crest of the hill, she took him in.

Watching the town memories milling about below, the ferryman cut a familiar figure. Scrawny as a fawn, his torn denims revealed hairy legs and knobbly knees; his unwashed hair fell in inky tendrils out of his poor attempt at a ponytail. While he ignored her presence-because he could always feel her arriving-he took another drag of his hand-rolled fag, followed by a swig of his blessed swill. He focused on something down the other side of the hill, and smirked fiendishly with a mouth full of craggly teeth. She missed watching him, in all honesty; she never told him, because it hurt him to hear it.

"Alright, Sev?"

He didn't even twitch, just waved her over. "Well, yeah. C'mon, Evans, have a look."

"What am I meant to be looking at?"

"Shut up and look, maybe you'll see it."

With a rude hand gesture, she walked to where he pointed in the distance. Leaning over, she saw the tops of two heads down the hill's slope-one pink, one black. "I can't see anything. The angle's bad."

"Then come up and see, it's champion."

"I can't with one hand, Sev. Just tell me what it is."

With a _tsk, _he waved his beer around like a magic wand. Some of it sloshed onto his outer layer of his washed out gray shirtsleeves, but he didn't pay it any mind. His waving sent the whole hill rolling on an invisible axis, then flattening out enough for her to see his memory.

"_God, _Sev, I don't need to see _that."_

"You sent her here. I wanted to show you that I'd greeted her properly."

"You were supposed to bring her over."

"And I did."

"To the other side, Sev, Christ."

"Are we looking at the same thing, Lily? That girl saw heaven. Though, the pink on top did not remain as such below, unfortunately. Bit of a disappointment, that."

"I hate it when you drink. You turn into a right pillock." He laughed a bit nastily, at which point she knew he'd prove difficult to work with. She decided not to mince words. "Come down from there and help me."

He chuckled. "Afraid I can't, what with being such a pillock and all. I've had a little to drink, since my memory willed it so."

"Sev, please."

"Who am I to refuse it? The drink, I mean. It also appears that you're unable to come _up _with one hand occupied-a serious failing on your part, dearest. Now it is that you can't come up and I can't come down." He drank again, reclining back against the tree trunk. "We seem to be at an impasse."

"You can fall out of the tree, then, quick as you like. This one can't wait, Sev. He has to be brought back to life."

"To life? If he wants to live so badly, what'd he go and die for?" Sev quaffed his beer. He wrestled out a few more drops before tossing the empty bottle over the side of the branch to join its fallen brethren. "Reversing misadventures is not in the job description."

"Sev."

"Hmm?"

"This one's mine. It's Harry, Sev."

He looked at her for the first time since she'd arrived. His hand hovered over his mouth, mid-yawn, and while she knew that a great deal of his drunken charade was self-preservation, she couldn't help but feel insulted. So she watched him, instead, while his mean black eyes, often narrowed, now roved over her face, before softening into a deep hurt. She felt a mirroring pain in her chest. It melded with other, older hurts there, before fading into hard empathy. He knew what it was to carry Harry's life in his hand, just as she did. It was a responsibility she carried to and beyond her grave, and nothing was above it.

"Potter's gotten himself into more trouble, then?"

"Is it still not your problem?"

He exhaled harshly, massaging his nose. She remembered when he broke it in a fight with a bully. They were ten, and he hadn't been allowed to return home until he put the bigger boy in his place._ "Either you fight him or you fight me,"_ were Tobias Snape's words._ "I'll not have a child runnin' from business, not to my house."_ The fight became a brawl when the bully called in siblings when the skinny boy hadn't any. Sev's nose was broken from a botched headbutt, but no Cokeworth kids bothered him from then on out. For Lily, it ended with a chipped tooth and another boy's blood on her school blouse.

Spinner's End was his territory until they left for their first year at Hogwarts. Every summer afterwards, when new personalities tried to assert dominance, she and Sev would sneak out with their stomping boots on and their hair pulled back. Well, she snuck, while Tobias waved Sev off from the porch. Contrarily, her mother detested violence. At some point so would she, but back then, it was Sev and Lily against the world. They protected each other. They fought each other's battles. They were an inseparable two-person army.

_What changed?_

Apparently, nothing much-at least not in the memory. After a moment of tense staring, the hill shifted back to its upright position. Soon faded the echo of Sev and the pink-haired girl, rolling about in the grass. While the lifeline grew uncomfortably hot in her palm, he swung down from the tree, landing noiselessly despite his father's old work boots. She kept the peace by not mentioning his sober dexterity.

"Where is he?"

"He's talking to Dumbledore at the crossroads."

"Are you joking? I have to_ wait_ for the little brat to finish chatting up-"

"Severus."

"_Tsk. _Old Lily isn't any fun." He sat cross-legged on the grass, pointedly ignoring the spot beside him. It was as strong a hint as any: he hated being looked down upon. So, with a put upon sigh, Lily eased down next to her best friend, laying the lifeline carefully across both of their laps.

"I'm no older than you, Sev. Remember, here we're the same age."

"Spare me. I know how this place works, seeing as I made it." He avoided touching her skin when he took the lifeline from her hand, running it through a thumb and forefinger. "You have-had-a husband, and one child with another on the way. You had a house and a job and a mission. 'Age' has nothing to do with number of years, and you know it. So spare me your platitudes. You, ma'am, are intolerably ancient."

"That was a very nice speech."

"Thank you. I've been working on it since the last time you visited."

"After your romp in the grass?"

"Before, actually."

"Hm. Oh, _here's_ a treat. Nice shirt, Snape." She glared at the tatty t-shirt that read "CUNT" in block letters across the front.

"I like it well enough. Saw it on a bloke in London, who proved disgustingly pleasant. Fit, though, and well read. We talked a bit about cannibals."

"What brought that on?"

"The shirt, of course. 'You are what you eat'."

She refused to laugh; she didn't want to encourage him. Despite that, he had an awful grin tucked away behind his waterfall of hair. She could nearly see him patting himself on the back. Cor, but when did he get so cheeky?

"You're an animal and you stink like vomit. When's the last time you bathed?"

"It's a memory, Evans, piss off. The dead are supposed to stink."

"Ah, well that's okay then." Lifeline pulsed once against her thigh. Ha, she'd forgotten how keen she was of hot pants at seventeen. Ah well, it was the seventies. She chalked it up to youthful indiscretion. "Sev?"

"Hmm?"

"I miss this."

He didn't have to agree with her aloud. She knew he did as well.

"Harry should be on his way here."

"Joy."

"None of that. You'll greet my son with a civil tongue in your mouth. I know you have one; use it."

He shrugged, wrapped the lifeline around his fist and came to his feet. At that age, he was still gawky, and his overbalancing swung him around on the heel of his back foot. It was rather unintentional, but it did serve some purpose, since he could speak his next words facing away. "Out of respect for you, Evans, I won't make the obvious joke. Goodbye."

"Goodbye, Sev."

"...Until next time."

The lifeline pulsed again, this time so strongly that she could feel the heat of it from almost a yard away. She couldn't understand how holding all that light failed to faze the ferryman, but he never offered an explanation, so she didn't ask for one. She'd learned with him to choose her battles. Maybe one visit, she would ask.

This time, though, she flicked the young Death Eater on the back of the neck and dashed down the hill. As she went, her waist thickened, her hair fell heavier against her back. Before long, she was herself as she'd been on Halloween of 1981. Behind her, the top of the hill glowed steadily brighter, throwing Fetter Crown's old tree in dramatic relief. A train whistled in the phantom distance. With that, Lily felt safe in the knowledge that her son would be taken care of.

* * *

"Welcome to the Hill of the Hereafter. This will be your final stop before you are returned to glorious life. I do hope your trip thus far has suited your existential needs."

Harry wasn't aware that he was being talked to until he was swarmed by the smell of cigarette smoke and body odor. Stunned by the stench, he hadn't the awareness or time to react to the stained hand shoving him hard and toppling him over onto tired landed wrong on one shoulder and cried out in pain.

"I don't like being ignored, Potter."

He'd been thrown right into a duel. He fumbled for his wand, one hand gripping his throbbing shoulder while the other held the aforementioned wand level to his attacker's kneecap. Quickly, he jabbed it up towards their face-the voice of the figure bearing down on him was raspy from smoking and androgynous at best. He looked his opponent in the eye, or rather, tried to, but too much hair hid a great deal of their features.

"This is what we're doing, then? Dueling? Let's not, I really can't be arsed to smack you about, not today. I can't bear to waste anymore time on you than necessary."

_Who the hell starts a fight and then abandons it?_

"Who are you? What do you want with me?"

"I've been assigned with _helping you, _you incorrigible gob. Merlin, help you, an idiot through and through, just like your hopeless excuse for a father."

"_Snape!?"_

"Yes, Potter, me._" _The person-man-looked nothing like the Snape he knew. He stood shorter, scrawnier, with oddly rounder features and an unpolished scowl-a near opposite of the man he'd saved, in appearance if not in disposition. How a teenager, reeking of misspent youth, managed to deride him with the same degree of bitter intolerance was beyond him, perhaps even beyond the wise men in mountains dedicated to puzzling out the mysteries of the universe.

"I'm to ferry you to the other side of here-in this case, life, because you, like the rest of your generation, do everything arse first. Now, let us be on before you do something stupid like slip away in an oblivion of rest. You will _not _sabotage my good efforts."

"You attacked me, you great festering prick! I'm supposed to wake up in a field of Death Eaters, and well, I guess I have, but how was I to know it was you? Especially looking like that?"

_Good lord, does his shirt say-_

"I don't expect you to understand this, Potter, but I'll make the effort to explain anyway. While I do so, would you please be so generous as to walk this way?"

Snape motioned towards a beaten path, worn into the side of the hill they were apparently standing on. The path started at the tree behind them, and the first few paces were littered with brown beer bottles with the labels picked off. Given the curdling stench wafting off of his professor's young double, Harry hazarded a guess as to the whereabouts of all that alcohol: the man had clearly bathed in it.

"Had a little bevvy, then, Snape?"

"Walk."

Harry didn't attempt to hide his disgust as he passed the other man by. Luckily, he was upwind of his chaperone, so the majority of his nonverbal foulness blew away with the light summer breeze. As he came down the steep hillside, the wild haired boy studied his surroundings. On an adjacent hill stood an ailing house, with dun walls and a brick-red roof. Years of weather had visibly worn down the rest of the property, including its trees, flat stone benches and the sign cheerfully reading "Cokeworth Historical Society presents Fetter Crown Park, built circa. 1867".

"Sir, where is this? We aren't still at the King's Cross, obviously."

He could practically hear Snape scowl behind him. "Death sent you to a train station. How terribly contrived."

Harry bristled. "You say it as if it's my fault I went there."

"It is your fault, Potter, because it is your memory, and _don't take that tone with me. _I assure you, you'll not like the consequences."

This man certainly couldn't help him, either way. Feeling bold, he snapped back a response."Or what, you'll give me detention? You can't take points in the afterlife, professor." He put harsh emphasis on the last word, and didn't expect the wave of odor, nor the arm to snake around his throat. Snape seemed to use the offensive of his stench to his advantage, as within seconds he had Harry in an expert headlock.

"I don't need points to beat your bloody head in."

Harry broke the headlock, years with Dudley and his gang coming into play. As soon as he was free, he pulled his wand on the manky young man, no older than he was, but several times more dangerous if one considered the dark flashing of his eyes.

"Wassit, Potter? _Scared_? I was only takin' the piss."

"You're not Snape."

The other man snorted and swayed on his feet. Harry didn't let that fool him-this man had attacked him twice now, and there was no saying when-

"It's a memory, you gormless shite." The imposter nodded, agreeing with his own declaration. "A memory of when I was your age and I was fucking pissed, yeah, but that's the memory and this is how you're in it. You-" he pointed with a hand which, for the first time, Harry noticed glowed a soft white. "You pick the version of me that you expect to need."

Harry unwittingly took on Hermione's tone for talking to idiots. "I need to be attacked?"

"No, you numpty, you need to_ trust_ me. To guide you."

"How will you attacking me make me trust you, and why are you shaking your head?"

The Snape memory-imposter dizzied himself with all his head-shaking and pressed both hands to his temples. His lifting the glowing hand physically pulled at a spot in Harry's chest; however, when he examined the front of his shirt, he found nothing. He aimed his wand at the glowing fist and demanded to know what it is.

"Stop, stop, no more questions. You need to trust me or I'll, or this memory more like, will just play. It'll just play out and we'll never get to where we need to get. To. I lived it, I know what happens. I just lose my breakfast, curse a bird and pass out. I'll be useless, you understand, so, trust me. _Trust._"

"I can't just-" A raucous cawing started up at the top of the hill. They were at a bit of a distance now, though they'd stopped when memory-Snape developed a sense a humor. From where they were, Harry could just see the canopy of the groaning oak, black with the restless, iridescent plumage.

"See, I'll spew on you, then on me, then take a shot at one of those rotten things before I can get you home. No, y'know what, nev'r mind. Don't trust me, or do, I don't care. Forget it, let's just go. I know the way, anyroad." He started walking, paying no mind to the gathering black atop the hill, or that he'd sprouted another bottle in his left hand to drink from. Looking from one to the other, Harry began to grow anxious.

"How is this meant to build trust? It seems like I have no other choice but to follow you, but-"

"No, no, don't you know anything, Potter? The memory is _saying _that you might not trust Snape, but you can trust me."

"That makes no sense, you _are Snape, _except Snape always has his wits about and you're-"

"_Ugh."_

"What?"

"Don' feel so good." Memory-Snape crouched down like a dog made to heel, before beginning an inauspicious tilt forward. Harry glanced at the conspiracy growing more agitated by the minute, and a rather green Snape that, in all honestly, look very little like the one with whom he'd fought for seven years of his life-_the one who'd long ago sworn to protect him. _This Snape was crude, filthy and most likely as destructive as the prophecy that had forced his own young life into crisis. This Snape couldn't help anyone; this Snape couldn't even help himself.

Harry could've screamed in frustration, thrown his wand and given up, but it was then that the noise of the conspiracy came an abrupt end. The savior of the wizarding world looked around them-the park had settled into the previous quiet. The cawing stopped and the tree stood, indifferent and empty but for green leaves against the afternoon sky.

Hesitantly, Harry saw to the hunched over memory-Snape. The man had yet to move; instead, he lay there, pouring sweat and panting like a runner recovering from a long-distance marathon. Harry inched closer, hesitating to call his name in fear of being disappointed. Silently, he admitted to needing his bastard f a professor. He couldn't raise from the dead with young Snape, the piss-artist. This was the truest thing he'd ever known. So, via a stroke of dramatic irony, Harry Potter admitted to himself that he was in desperate need of the man this Snape might be.

A remembered breeze washed over the both of them. It seemed the halo of smoke, cheap beer and vomit had gone, leaving in its absence the smell of strangely acidic sweat and dungeon damp. Harry spoke the foremost question on his mind.

"How come you're still dressed like some homeless punk?"

Snape's haunches rose. "Is that what your trust sounds like, Mr. Potter?"

"It's possible, sir. Sorry."

Snape leaned back on his heels and lifted his head skyward, as would one praying for strength. His black eyes were clear, if troubled and narrowed and gleaming with a perpetual ire.

"It'll have to do."


	5. Prince and Crown

"No dallying, Potter. Forgo the sight seeing, if you can."

The pair moved at a crawl towards the Fetter Crown house. Snape was still recovering from his violent attack of reminiscence, and every few paces up the incline took a greater toll. He tired faster than he could catch his breath, but he seemed more reluctant to admit defeat. Even while stopping on occasion to look about, Harry kept up with his guide with little effort. Some small sympathy had Harry offering his shoulder for support, though he was promptly derided and made to walk further ahead.

Every few paces he cast a furtive glance backward to check his guide's progress. He once went so far as to suggest a break, and hesitated to repeat that mistake. He knew he was making a nuisance of himself, but embarrassing as it was to so obviously care about Snape's health, he felt he had to. He needed the man's knowledge of the dimension he'd been left in. If anything, this Snape was, if not particularly willing to help him, at least capable of so doing. Harry was reluctant to relinquish these paltry mixed blessings, and so he took license with Snape's health and made it his own.

"Just up the hill, Potter, no further. Don't enter the house without an escort."

"Are we taking a break?" _Fingers crossed._

"Don't ask stupid questions. I must instruct you on how to proceed."

Harry barely held back a sigh. "Understood, sir." He figured a little respect wouldn't go amiss. His mouthing off seemed to draw out the young idiot in his professor, for reasons still enshrouded in mystery. Thus, he stayed to his best behavior, hoping for the same in return.

The second hill of Fetter Crown Park came to a more gradual peak than the last, contrary to its steep appearance from afar. Harry wondered if the shape of the hill was an optical illusion-tamer than it looked-or if it simply wasn't as static in memory as it would have been in reality. Maybe the forms of the memory could change to suit them, like its inhabitants.

"Stop, Potter." They were near the crest. The ground had evened out, and discarded cans of something or other lay crushed into the dirt. Perhaps young Snape had nipped into those as well; he seemed the type.

"Of course, sir."

"Hm." Snape looked down his nose at the Boy-Who-Lived. Something grayish-brown smudged the hooked tip of it; Harry grimaced. "What, boy?"

"N-nothing, sir."

"Again, you say 'sir', almost as if you might respect me."

"I-" Harry paused to think about how to respond, He didn't want to lie to his professor, for fear of being left in a beer-soaked wonderland. "I do respect you, sir?"

"Are you asking or telling me? You know, Potter, your sudden respect for authority, while long anticipated, is wholly out-of-character. I'm beginning to think you've discovered subtlety in sarcasm."

"Erm?" Snape raised an eyebrow in mild distaste. Harry felt vaguely accused and nearly offended. Still, familiar dislike graced the unfamiliar face, and instead of responding, he stared. The discrepancy between this man and the one he'd known transcended age and dress. This boy, no older than Harry himself, had all the component pieces of Snape, but none in the right composition.

"What, Potter?"

"Just...you look so different. Not only young or incomplete or whatever-"

"I shouldn't look the same. This is a version of myself that you've never met, nor are you likely to meet in whoever I am twenty years hence. As I said earlier, this is the Snape you are most likely to trust; I'm not meant to be the same as the one you know, as you clearly don't trust me then." He took on a lecturer's manner. "Think back on the Tom Riddle from the Horcrux in your second year. You were meant to trust him. Yet, did the Tom Riddle hidden away fifty years before look anything like the Dark Lord we so despise?"

"You know about the diary." _Of course he did. He probably helped destroy it._

"Of course, idiot boy. I disposed of it myself. Surely you could ascertain that as part of my many tiresome tasks, alongside saving your fool hide and teaching Potions to hundreds of you little turds with mouths_._"

Harry choked on an inhale. Snape sneered at his flailing.

"See, uhm, real Snape wouldn't say something so vulgar. 'Turds with mouths', really?"

"I cannot fathom a more accurate description."

The core of the strange divide between older Snape and his past self dawned on him. Decomposition: this Snape was in the midst of it. He wouldn't grow into his older self so much as break down to the basic elements, improve on those, and fill the gaps with a cold, vitriolic darkness. For instance, the glare would sharpen; the hair would keep to a shorter cut, though likely remain just as unwashed; he'd gain at least half a foot in height, if nothing in width; his face had to lose the rest of its alien softness; and his voice...

Suddenly, he couldn't help himself. Possibly driven by the inexplicable surreality of this world, he channeled an inner voice that spoke with Hermione's heedless excitement. "You still sound so young, too young. You obviously hit puberty at some point-I mean, just look at you-but your voice is so high still, you sound like a, a little boy or even a teenage girl. How is that even possible?"

Snape snarled, transforming his face to something peculiarly intimidating. Habit forced Harry to jump out of smacking range-or biting range, even-flashing back to a rough grip around his throat, or a hard shove to the ground. Young as he was, drunk or no, this Snape had no qualms about laying hands on someone his size. Muscle memory kicked in, and Harry went darting up the hill like a rabbit to its den. Immediately, Snape caught him with a hand around his ankle. With it, he dragged him back down the incline, hissing outrage.

"Again, you prove yourself _incapable of restraint. _Are you brain dead, boy?!"

"Sorry! I'm sorry, I don't know, just-no offense meant, sir. Honest."

"And yet, I'm offended. Shall I thank Gryffindor bravery for your brain getting away from you this time, too, _Potter?_" He spat the name as he flipped the smaller boy around and leaned well into Harry's personal space. The other man wielded his name like a curse, promising violence. Harry lay prone underneath him, staring up into his chalky face, confused by the ferocity of his guide's response, by his own lapse in verbal control, and by the bizarreness of the whole situation. "Are you looking to be _killed?! _Is that what this is about?"

While Harry didn't appreciate being threatened, he maintained interest in living. Allowing a few minutes for Snape's ire to cool, he tried apologizing again. The second apology had more of the desired effect: it didn't mollify his present company, but did manage to remind him of work in need of doing. He suspected his panicked look did something to convince Snape of releasing his ankle and slouching off of him, exasperated.

"Idiot, _idiot. _I should _never_ have agreed to send you over. Listen. To. Me. _You aren't to enter the house until you understand how to go about it._ If you had run ahead like that and crossed the threshold, you'd find yourself dead sooner than you could blink."

Snape ran a faintly trembling hand through his hair, pulling it back from his face. Harry saw more fully the alienness of him, the places where he'd misread stark panic as rage, and had to turn away or risk more slips of the tongue. He couldn't help criticizing the poor imitation, and half-wished Hermione were there with him to explain the impulse. Instead, Snape's diatribe washed over him.

"We'll forget about your incompetence if you can promise to do_ exactly_ as I say. If you don't, you will die permanently, and travel to a place far beyond my reach. Your friends will be forced to do without you, _and I will have failed. _There are things you _must_ understand before we begin, and only I can tell you them. So don't _ever _try to run from me again. Am I clear?"

He nodded once, twice. Snape sagged, rubbed the heels of his hands into his eye sockets. Sensing vulnerability explained better than words how nearly he'd come to sabotaging himself.

Watching and waiting to be addressed again, he sat tall as Snape did. In increments, the other man became the image of a hoodlum academic. He began slowly, choosing his words with specific, almost insulting, care.

"The issue in explaining is doing so in such a way as to insure that you understand. Though I'm certain to regret saying this in short order, if you have any questions, ask them. We can't afford you misstepping and killing yourself with your own pitiful ignorance."

"How much time do we have for questions, sir? If I'm to understand everything-"

"Oh, don't ascribe more to your intelligence than you've proven to have. No one can completely understand this process except me, and even then a great deal of it is simply intuition."

"Listen, Snape, if I'm to ask questions, you'll have to allow me one whole bloody sentence."

"Hm. In any case, if you're worried about a time limit, don't be. Though I'd prefer that you be on your way as quickly as possible, time doesn't exist here as it does for the living. We could sit here talking for days and hardly a second would pass for your corpse back in Merlin knows where."

"Wait, how much do you actually know about the real world? Do you have any idea what's happening, any at all?"

"How is that really relevant to-you know what, never mind. I know nothing about what is happening on the outside besides what visitors and such deem fit to tell me. Next question."

Harry breathed deeply, bracing himself, filling his lungs with muggy, summer air, and asked his question as it came to him upon exhale.

"Where exactly are we?"

"Exactly? We're nowhere."

Harry scowled. Though he didn't know it, he made a fair imitation of his escort.

He failed to see how he was meant to be cured of his confusion. He supposed briefly that the dead all spoke in riddles. Snape's riddles only differed in that they seemed to mock him for not solving them.

Harry assumed his most deadpan expression to communicate his unenlightened dissatisfaction. Eventually, Snape stopped pretending to have spoken sense.

"I am hard pressed to teach this to you when you don't already now, so do make some effort on your part."

"Gladly, as soon as you say something useful, sir."

"Imagine describing the color green to a person born blind, then criticize me. _Next question._"

"Not until you've properly answered this one."_ It's fifth year all over again- "Discipline your mind, Potter. You're hardly trying." "_I'm still so ignorant now, sir, I'm fit to trip over a rock and off myself, and that will hardly do anyone any good."

Snape shared via glare a sentiment along the lines of "I beg to differ", but drudged up the courtesy to reiterate.

"After you died, you were sent to King's Cross Station, correct? When asked, what did Dumbledore tell you about that space." Harry narrowed his eyes and shared what he could remember. Vague as Dumbledore was in life, death did him few favors by way of clarity. The long and short of his explanation came down to King's Cross being every bit as real as it could possibly be, except in the dimension of his thoughts. "That place is called a 'crossroads'. This basically means that in the scheme of your subconscious, King's Cross Station is where every major decision of your life up until this point has originated from. On some level, you believe that train platform is the point of intersection of the paths leading to your current self. Do you follow?"

He didn't, but said otherwise for the sake of discussion. "So, what, this park is your 'crossroads'?"

Snape scowled. "In a simple terms, yes. However, for reasons I doubt you'll capable of grasping, my crossroads is more than just this park. I've done a great many things until now, Mr. Potter, and have transcended several definitions of myself. This park is simply one area of many, one in which this particular version of myself is in control."

Harry turned the old oak, still groaning and swaying on the opposite hill. He side-eyed the shaggy delinquent to his left. "There are other versions then, obviously. Why didn't I go to one of them? What makes you so 'trustworthy'?"

Snape returned his sideways glare. "I can only predict that it's because we're the closest in age."

He snorted; even Snape conceded his point with a shrug. They both knew that age had little to do with number of years. "I can't pretend to know that, Potter, when it's your mind interacting with mine that decides the form most suitable. Maybe you're meant to find a kindred spirit in arrogant, sartorially-challenged layabouts."

"You didn't mention my father there, Snape. I'm shocked."

"I felt the reference was implied. In any case, the tie-in with the house you foolishly ran towards is that it is the territory of another Snape, altogether. I control the oak tree hill and, on occasion, the conspiracy. Had you gone crashing into the house like a blinded Hippogryff, you'd find yourself relieved of your quest for resurrection. Like a pig, you'd be gutted, throat-slit and strung up to drain." Harry went pale. The young Snape looked pointedly to the house's dark windows; his body language spoke of frustration and old fear. "That one there isn't a fan of trespassers."

The boy hero swallowed a few times to no avail. All the moisture in his body seemed to pour out in sweat. He was no stranger to confrontation with the homicidal, but where with blood-red eyes there was a call to battle, the black fury he imagined begged caution. Plainly written, it was fear of the devil he knew versus the one he could only imagine. At its core, it was the difference between snakes and sea monsters. "So how are we going to avoid meeting him?"

"We can't. It already knows we're here-has done since we left the other hill." Snape didn't turn away from the house. While talking, he fixated on one window on the second floor. When he motioned for Harry to look as well, he tilted his head and raised both eyebrows: in the window on the far left, a shadow passed from left to right, glimpsed from between yellowed lace curtains. The late afternoon sun reflected salmon-gold off the other windows, and one could only see it from the shoulders to about the waist, where the window sill cut it off. This created a one-sided standoff: it was impossible to watch the shadow watching them. By the time he'd thought to change his point of view, it'd receded back into the dark of the house.

"Christ, we have to go _in there_."

"Yes, in order to find the door to the other side. If you planned on dying, I'd take you further down, by the riverside. The Snape there is over ten years younger and keeps to himself. He'd just run off or ask for payment, at most."

"But that Snape..."

"That Snape guards the door to life. Personally, I think it's more mindless torment than anything else, and as with any other grudge, it wants to share its misery." Snape finally turned his narrowed, black gaze to his charge. "Which is why we won't give it reason to visit harm upon us, Potter."

"Us? He can hurt other versions of himself-or itself, I mean, how is that even right? You all should have some type of co-Snape immunity." Snape took his turn to snort artlessly.

"It doesn't care, Potter. It's already dead."

The statement didn't sit well with him. "I don't understand. At King's Cross, I didn't see any other versions of myself, and I think I would if you've gone and made all of this. How is that possible? And why is Snape, whichever Snape, in charge of moving people around the afterlife?"

Snape sighed and scratched the bump in the bridge of his nose. _He must have broken it at least once_, Harry thought. _Or had it broken for him, considering who he is. _However, thinking about the young Snape, the Snape he knew and the shadow in the window, who was he really?

"That isn't an easy question to answer, Harry, and I'd rather get this outing over with." He turned fully to his guide, jaw set. Snape sighed, again, with the consummate whole of his frustration. "Potter, it's not important! When a person dies, an acquaintance is asked to ferry them to their final destination. It's never been explained to me why, and I don't ask, but the process is fairly subjective. It seems, in times of war, it's more expedient for the dead to cycle through a personal crossroads where they meet whomever-a mentor or an old friend-and then, once they decide to die, they are led through a common crossroads of no real importance toward everlasting peace."

"And this isn't true for normal deaths? Like if I choked on a crisp and bit it, I'd just what?"

Snape's scowled grew fiercer, still. "Move on from a personal crossroads to a personal death, taking your sweet time reliving your life and expending precious cosmic energies, no doubt. With a war on, there are too many people dying at once, as is to be expected. Death prefers that all those souls not waste energy faffing about in the hereafter and just reroutes them to someone they know, if only vaguely, to be escorted to eternity."

Harry found this take on death both disillusioning and morbidly fascinating. "Can dying be that efficient, though?"

"From what I've gathered, yes. It seems I've touched quite I few lives, and have gleaned enough information from them to figure my theory quite sound. The dead shepherd the dead."

"Except you're not dead." He immediately regretted saying so. For a moment, the warm summer day chilled; two-no, three-ravens flew overhead.

"No, I'm not." Harry fought the urge to cast his gaze downward. He wouldn't be penitent, or bare his throat in submission. He felt guilty, fine, but Hermione was right: nothing could be done about it now. At least, there was nothing he was willing to do. He bore the other man's harsh stare, and Snape seemed to recognize his defiance, because he looked away first. "I'm alive, obviously, technically speaking. Thanks to you and your...however, in a metaphorical sense, I defy classification. You know, of course, that I was a spy for Dumbledore."

He nodded.

"Living as such has gifted me with quite a few near death experiences. So many, in fact, that I've never truly recovered. Coupled with some of my own...let us call it self-experimentation, I've affixed some parts of myself to my own hereafter."

"I'm sorry, but I don't understand what you're trying to say, sir."

"I'm dead inside, Potter. I've killed myself so many times on enough levels that Death doesn't know what to do with me. Expiring physically would've freed me of this place, but now I'm stuck gripping to life." Snape climbed to his feet and strode towards the Fetter Crown house, now fully recovered. "Still, I'm dead enough to point the way for Lily Potter's darling ickle son. Follow me."

Harry stood and watched Snape move farther ahead. It made him sick with dread, the thought of following the man into that house. He felt ambushed by a man he hated to think he'd wronged. To Harry, guilt was like a debt owed for past mistakes. He could stand to owe Cedric Diggory, or Sirius, or even Teddy Lupin; it stung to owe anything to Severus bloody Snape.

The devil himself broke him from his spiraling musings, barking his name in that ridiculously mismatched voice of his. Harry jogged to catch up.

* * *

Standing in front of the house suddenly imbued the air around them with a sense shared fear. Albeit, the fear Harry experienced was a fraction of Snape's own-the other man was, quite literally, facing his own demons. Maybe Harry had more to fear, since his guide had to have entered the house however many times before, while for Harry it was his first encounter, hopefully his last. _How many times has Snape met his other self? _He asked the question aloud.

"The times I've met it are disproportionate to the times I've entered the house. That is all you'll need to know. Now, I've led quite a few souls to life before you, and have learned that it appreciates deference. It's not unlike some of the nobler creatures in that sense." He thought idly that the man might have been rambling to stall for time. "If you show it proper respect, it might lurk about, stalk you, speak to you, but it won't have cause to touch. Generally, the dead aren't allowed to touch the living or those bound for life-an unspoken rule. Don't forget that, Potter, once your time has come."

Harry thought back to his mother, in the Forbidden Forest, keeping just out of reach until his number had been called. In a flash of understanding, he walked carefully forward until he stood level with Snape at the porch's bottom step. Then, easing into the motion so as not to alarm, he bowed humbly at the waist.

Nothing moved in the house, but Snape mimicked him, at which point the tired front door creaked open. They heard more than saw it move, but when the house stilled again and they raised their heads in unplanned unison, the pair could see all the way down the front hall. Harry wiped his damp palms on his trouser leg, while Snape lost the tension in his body in tiny fractions. Soon, they were toeing the threshold and breathing dust and century old wood smell.

"We're safe, Potter, for the moment. We go in, find the door and send you on your merry way."

"Are you sure we're safe? This could be a trick to-" Snape gripped his arm, silencing him. Up the stairs to the second floor, someone chuckled.

"Don't give it...ideas," said Snape, from the corner of his mouth. Harry didn't respond except to shake his arm free, and noticed something. There were no footsteps, no groaning wood, to suggest the master of the house had moved. Yet, the presence atop the stairs had disappeared.

"We are safe so long as we move with extreme caution. The quickest way to find the door is to resist the temptation for stupidity, so I am putting a modicum of faith in your wariness of a painful death. Past experience tells me I'm to be sorely disappointed, but..." The man shrugged.

"We have to _find _the door, meaning you don't know where it is. Excellent, Snape, very helpful."

"_Do not_ start with me. You will proceed as follows: when you find an open door, do not go into the room. It's probably in there, trying to lure you in. If you go into the room anyway, _don't touch anything. _It can use that as an excuse to eviscerate you."

"Seriously, just for touching. Color me surprised that his name is Snape."

"It doesn't have a name, Potter, and don't get cheeky or you'll kill us both."

"What happens if you die?"

"Focus! What is it with you? Did you hit your hollow head when you fell in the forest? This. Can. Get. You. Killed."

"Then. Talk. Faster." Snape wrapped both hands around his arms and flexed his fingers in an odd fashion, perhaps to keep from strangling him. They were still standing in the doorway, and Harry was stuck between growing tedium with lecturing and the itch to be done with Snape's demented mind scape. When Snape's grip tightened to bruising, he apologized without meaning it and urged a quicker briefing.

"I should let it tear you limb from limb."

"You shouldn't give it ideas, sir." Snape's glare was baleful, and Harry, quite done with talking, turned into the house.

His first few steps creaked worryingly, and a path of mirroring creaks lined the floor above them. Dust and debris shook loose from the light fixtures and kicked up from the hardwood floors.

He passed first the stairs, then the sitting room with its sparse furniture, then on to a dining room and beyond that, an office crammed with books. As he walked by this last room and its open doorway, and turned right up a hallway lined with closed doors, he finally asked himself what he was looking for. Lacking an answer, he turned to Snape, who stood smugly, arms crossed, by the library.

"Question, Potter?"

"Yes, sir. What am I to do for rooms with closed doors?" Snape smirked, hitched up another eyebrow, uncrossed his arms and walked up to Harry's side. He took a moment to survey the ominous hall and even hummed quietly to himself, until Harry wondered if he'd have to beg.

_Sod groveling for this git. I'll open every damned door myself if I have to._

"No doubt you're thinking about opening every door in this hall until you find the one you want."

"Of course not, sir. That'd be silly."

"Hm, but not far off mark. Go with your first instinct, since dumb luck seems to favor the rash." Snape walked to the nearest door, grasped the doorknob, and knocked on the drab wood with the knuckle of his opposite hand.

Harry didn't know what he expected, but was disappointed. No one answered the knock. Snape knocked again and cocked his head to press his ear against the door. When silence answered, he tried the knob. It rattled more than turned: locked.

"If the door is locked, the correlating room is irrelevant. This Snape probably just stores memories there, and none of those can help you. _Do not _try to force it open, or else-"

"He could take that as an invasion of privacy, hang me from the ceiling by my thumbs and rip my guts out. I get it. What do I do if someone answers my knock?"

"Hardly anyone will. If someone does, it's probably just another Snape. This would mean it'd be best that you not answer back."

_It's like he expects I'd want to rummage around in his life, _Harry shook his head, when a phantom breeze ruffled the hair on the nape of his neck. He shuddered from head to heel. _Not bloody likely. _

They set about knocking, rattling doorknobs and, in some cases, peering into the dusty rooms. Some were guest rooms, while others were bathrooms or linen closets. Nothing jumped out at Harry as being particularly worth mentioning, until sometime around the twelfth door, when Snape explained that if the room beyond had doors of its own, it was best to check those as well.

By weird fate, the next door he opened revealed a guest room with two doors of its own. One door, which he judged to be a closet, stood firmly shut; the door across from it, however, was ajar. Attracted to the open door, Harry forgot Snape's warning against them from their strained lecture at the front of the house. Now, at the end of the corridor, in the second to last room, it hadn't crossed his mind that should the door behind him lock itself, young Snape, down the hall, would be too far to help him.

In a moment of forethought, Harry chose to knock on the room's closed door first, to allow himself more time to explore what appeared to be an en suite bathroom. Outside, he could just hear Snape knocking, old hinges complaining and so forth. With his whole body facing the bathroom except for his one fist, Harry absently knocked on the closet door with one, solid tap.

"Yes?"

He jerked his fist back, attention arrested by what should be a closet but which, upon review, seemed to be an adjoining bedroom. After a beat, he knocked again.

"Yes, what? Come in." Harry, puzzled and excited, gripped the patina bronze doorknob and gave it a slow turn. A woman's voice had greeted him. Husky, probably from smoking or illness, but definitely, assuredly female. She'd answered and yet-

"Potter! Where've you got to? Come, we're to check the second floor." Harry turned to face his guide in the doorway-mouth agape, one hand still on the door. "Well, Potter? _Move."_

"Snape, I-"

"Snape? Severus?" The color drained from Snape's face, what little of it there once was. Striking quickly, he tore into the room, grabbing Harry by the wrist with one hand and wrenching him from the doorknob with the other. He hauled Harry from the room and the boy, mystified, wouldn't let himself be dragged. As they struggled, the woman in the closed off room asked after them. "Sev, what's happening? You know I loathe strangers in the house."

While Snape flew from the room, the woman seemed to have had enough and made to leave. Her door opened, and a creamy hand held the doorknob. Harry opened his mouth to shout "Wait!" because he figured, being in Snape's memories, there were few women in his life that would be hiding behind closed doors. Anxious to see his mother again, Harry fought being dragged away, but the Snape's grip was like white-knuckled steel.

It wasn't until he'd looked back, just as Snape got the better of him, just as the man made to slam the door, that he stole a glimpse of the woman scowling at them. She hadn't hair that flowed, long and auburn-instead, she sported inky black curls, hacked mercilessly short. Those abyssal eyes hadn't a kind smile to spare, and her shoulders, bare from her nightdress, were lined blue-black with ink.

Her hands were another matter entirely. They spoke to him on an existential level. While finer and free of stains, he'd have sworn before the full Wizengamot that they were the same hands now crushing his wrist and hauling him away.

* * *

**A/N: I've been burning to write this chapter for a while. I wish this was the strangest thing I had planned but *shrug*. Again, I edit as I post, so watch out for that. I also noticed that chapters have been getting gradually longer. Sorry if you prefer short, I guess? Also, feel free to review, so I know if I'm making sense. Thanks for sticking with it so far!  
**


	6. Treasure

The Great Hall was full. From wall to wall, people swam through each other to reach their friends, siblings, housemates: alive, frightened, alive.

* * *

Her eyes, her hands, stayed where they'd first alighted after they'd laid her son down with the dead. One of hers, a casualty-simultaneously, she was made of ice and full of fire. She was alive with grief; she was dead with her child. Molly bent to lay beside him and placed both hands on his face, where she knew he used to live. Effectively, the channel leading out from her inner world was broken. The filter on her thoughts came away with the rush of feeling. She spoke her every emotion.

_Freddie. _

There was evil in this world. It touched her family. She swore it wouldn't. She swore. Please, please, let it take her instead.

Then, the shouting started. She thought of attacking Death Eaters, and looked up, ferocious, ready. Yet the shouting, despite her wildness, came with elation and a surging in the crowd.

"Thank you! Merlin, thank you, thank you." Thanks, thanks for battle? Thanks? What about "I'm sorry"? "Please, no"? Unless Voldemort, unless the evil that touched them, had congregated at her son's head for her mercy, who existed in this world to be thanked?

Truthfully, it took a moment to process. Arthur continued on in her ear, gripping her shoulders, shaking. She wanted to snap at him. She wanted to be left alone; she wanted him back to join her holding, her howling. He kept talking at her, holding her, touching the hand on Fred's chest, gripping her wand, willing her to look.

She said couldn't see. He said to look, look.

"Something's happening, Molly dear. Oh, look at that, and more of them, still. Freddie's next; I know it. I know our boy. He's next."

Molly watched the other bodies rise up off the floor, climb to their feet even, and breath, just breath. Though the change came swiftly over the multitude, she saw it in pieces. One young man cried with his first breath, deep, burgeoning sobs. She mistook him for another parent until she saw the grime caking his face and hair, and recalled the exploded arc that took four others at half past nine. She remembered because she'd thought of her children when they floated him in; she remembered thinking that her children's school had become a graveyard, where the faculty exhumed their students from the rubble.

His boy's friends swarmed him, and they all of them cried and swore and hugged each other.

One girl-fourteen, still in her uniform-turned over on the floor and gestured at the bodies of people yet to rise. She screamed about being unfairly chosen. Molly screamed with her, in some part of her blinded heart. Her older brother, next to rise, grabbed her and asked her to stop. Slowly, she understood the implications of this exchange and the dozen others.

She held on to Fred's robes-nice ones, bought on his own between he and his brother. That damned joke shop gave her boys respectability and she was proud of them then, and she'd be proud of him now if he'd just breath. She'd be proud of him for the rest of her life if he came back, if he could fill his chest, he could blink even once-her damn brilliant boy, first from the pair of them out the womb. Seventy hours of labor to birth him and a thousand years waiting for that first breath, that first cry.

Short of having a child, she'd never wished so hard for someone to breath. Breathe, like when she peeked into the rooms some nights and watched all of her family snore. Or even breathe like when some sickness spread through her little ones-though the twins were always fairly healthy at any age.

She wished, desperately, for that boundless energy. She listened to the shouts, the greeting of miracles, and decided that nothing else could possibly be more beautiful than him, alive.

She begged, maybe even out loud, for her son's return.

* * *

Fred woke up on a tried stretcher, stiff from the cold of the stone floor. His waking lacked in any usual flair except for the miraculous virtue of having happened. Given favorable circumstances, he did manage some small mischief. He eased his eyes open-a flutter of lids, a batting of ginger lashes. Then he grunted, not dissimilar to a warthog several times his size, and asked cordially that his mother loosen her excited grip.

"Unhand me, woman! You'll have clawed my skin off soon as say hullo!"

His polite request shocked his mother into joyous and inconsolable tears. The rest were grinning-quite madly, in fact.

His saner, though markedly less handsome, brother George wrapped a hand around his upper arm and helped him to sit up. There were some tears in his eyes, and with the grinning, he looked a perfect wreck."What's this? I leave you alone for five minutes and you've all but gone to pieces. What am I to do with you lot if you can't even handle my taking a quick kip?"

"In our defense, dearest brother, your failed to send due notice before proceeding to nap. Bad etiquette, that."

He hadn't the time to respond before he was buried in freckles and grubby red hair. Overcome with relief, disbelief and weak-kneed gratitude, no present Weasley had the presence of mind to question why Fred smelled so distinctly of lily flowers and smoke.

* * *

"Snape, stop!"

Harry dug in his heels, but only served to stumble on the other man's next powerful tug. A rush of adrenaline had given his guide a strength past the limits of his scrawny frame. He could do little to stop being dragged down the hall and presumably out the front door. He tried to appeal to the man's initial purpose.

"We have to go upstairs, remember? The_ door_, we have to find the right door. You said, and I'm listening, so let's do it. Snape,listen to me!"

"No." The man marched forward unflaggingly, face hidden behind a curtain of hair. Harry looked over his shoulder at the end of the hall. The door still stood defiantly open, and the woman decided against following them. She leaned against the door frame, arms crossed, and watched him watch her.

"Snape, please-"

"_NO. _You have _no _respect for authority. You have _no _respect for _privacy. _You poked and you've pried and now _it _is within its rights to render us both wholly and entirely deceased. I'll hear no more from you."

The dull pounding of his boots on the wood floor nearly covered the skittering coming from the floor above. The guardian of Fetter Crown house was stalking their flight. Harry couldn't help another glance backwards, where the woman still stood watching from further away. She seemed so completely at ease, he failed to decide just how worried he should be. Was she resolute in the knowledge that she was safe, and did that transfer over to him? He didn't think Snape above fear mongering, but his panic read as genuine. What protection did she have that they didn't? Alternately, was she simply unperturbed by the notion of watching them be slaughtered?

They turned the corner at a half-run, and Harry used the momentum of the move to break free of Snape's vicious hold. This brought Snape to pause a meter or so ahead. He spun on his heel to face him, and for the first time, Harry saw his would-be professor look every bit his anxious seventeen years. To his credit, the man put on an impressive front of righteous fury, but war taught Harry to sense fear. The terror of young men came off as focused determination, as a new and aggressive strength. Snape looked prepared to thrown him over his shoulder and carry him out, if necessary.

"Potter. Come here. Now." Weight shifted overhead, upsetting still more dust, but neither boy looked away from the other. Harry held both hands in front of him in a universal gesture of caution, as though coaxing a wild animal.

"I think you should calm down."

"Potter, I won't ask again." More creaking came from the second floor, and Harry quickly realized the direction of the footsteps: the Fetter Crown Snape was heading for the stairs. Young Snape looked bloodless and raging. The line of his pressed lips nearly disappeared, thin as it was.

Done with his antics, he lifted his fist-the one that glowed and corresponded to a place along Harry's sternum. The Boy-Who-Lived recognized the look of an ultimatum.

"What is that, Snape? What does it do?"

"This is a leash, Potter." He lifted it higher. "A lifeline like this can be used to lead wayward souls to their intended destinations. It's meant to keep you attached to your corpse. Then, you die, and some dutiful reaper brings it to me.

"If that _thing _gets a hold of it, it will _cut it_ like a sister of Fate, and you will be trapped between worlds. You'll be a ghost, Potter. You'll have a charmed non-life replete with angst and deathday parties and a silvery, translucent, lightning bolt scar."

Snape nodded, nostrils flared, as if smelling Harry's poorly suppressed jolt of panic.

"Last I checked, ghosts haven't a chance against the Dark Lord. So, you'll leave with me, and I'll find another way to ferry you. Come along."

Harry shook his head to clear it. He was afraid, without a doubt. He couldn't claim to be made of mindless bravery and daft heroics, despite the opinion of his present company. However, he survived off of few instincts, one of which screamed at him to stay put.

"I understand what you're saying, but-"

"Dammit, Potter! Why must I always fight for your cooperation?!"

"The woman in the room isn't scared! We shouldn't be, either." He straightened his posture to show a false confidence. "We have to stay."

"_Forget about her_," shouted Snape. "Sod the bloody woman and the room. She is hardly in danger here." He ended by bringing his glowing fist down with a sharp jerk, drawing Harry forward. Though most likely accidental, the motion broke the standoff between the two wizards. Once free of the tension, Snape kept firm hold of the lifeline and ran full tilt for the exit. Harry protested, pleading than swearing; Snape tossed rejoinders over his shoulder, nearing the open door.

There was no forewarning 'it' descending the stairs. In a matter of moments, blackness blocked their view of the front door. A crescendoed slapping of bare feet on wood inspired still more instinct on Harry's part: he jumped from the corridor into the threshold of the sitting room; a flash of white barreled past.

The Fetter Crown Snape moved like a lethifold, and all at once, the swooping, black shadow wrapped around a rail-thin figure clad in off-white. Neither the shadow nor the woman were present a moment before, and the subsequent struggle fascinated as well as terrified.

Harry fell back a step as young Snape slackened his hold on the leash with a yell. Both boys staggered through the open door of the sitting room: Snape dove under the grand piano-thick with cobwebs and missing keys. Harry, being attached to him, was forced into the same, cramped space. The smell of acidic sweat was thick in close quarters, as was the dungeon damp, while the tobacco smoke ever quite left his clothes.

The smell, and the omnipresence of dust, embodied the whole of this horrible adventure-that, and the expectation of harm.

They kept their eyes peeled for shuffling feet and any flashes of black-on-white. The struggle came closer, then threw itself farther down the hall. Locating the conflict through sound proved more worrisome than helpful, however, when one of the memories started Apparating from room to room. Like a bucking horse, they tried to throw off their attacker.

Neither memory made an excess of noise. The loudest element was the protest of the ancient floors. Only young Snape could be heard clearly, cursing Harry and near-constant misfortune.

Suddenly, the fight came down on top of them. A mushroom cloud of filth enveloped them, then settled. With an animal brutality, the Fetter Crown Snape drove his opponent into the tatty carpet, an opponent whom Harry recognized as the tattooed woman. Young Snape flinched bodily. His shrinking into himself triggered the memory of Severus, the child, cowering while his parents fought nearby. In sympathetic horror, Harry cringed from the violence, before his vision cleared and he saw the woman, coated in dust, pinning down the writhing black nothingness of the grudge with a bony knee.

She was scowling and made of joints- ribs and sharp angles; a cut on her eyebrow trickled blood down the side of her face. However, the sight of her, victorious, sent through him a gladness he directed at the Snape by his side. With some smugness, he promoted his rightful trust in the memory. He was complemented by her bearing down on the Fetter Crown Snape and telling it in no uncertain terms to stay upstairs.

"It would better serve your purpose if you didn't interfere," she said, and the three of them watched the shadow slide out from under her, over the floor, and up the front stairs. After a beat, she turned to the piano and crossed her arms. Harry led the way out from underneath it, and thanked her; she shrugged and addressed her male counterpart.

"Severus."

Snape curled his lip and matched her posture. This failed to amuse. Her own lip curled, in conjunction with a raised eyebrow. Harry imagined them to be playing an impromptu theatre game, or competing for a title of most generally displeased.

"Sev, I was not aware that you made work in tourism. Imagine my surprise to find Harry Potter walking through this house unescorted."

"I would rather not, actually. I've never found enjoyment in sympathizing with idiots."

She scoffed, and Harry knew well enough to stand back from a spar between Snapes. "Between the two of us, I'm the idiot? I'd love to see the mental acrobatics it took you to reach that conclusion. Pray tell."

"Don't play games with me. I'm to show Potter through the crossroads into life."

"From Hell to Purgatory, then? Quaint. Tell me, Virgil, if this sounds at all familiar: 'And he will receive his due on the eve of the 15th of March, 2670 A.D., recorded as of the 2nd of May, 1998 A.D.; Death willing.' Does that mean anything to you, anything at all? If you need a refresher, I'd suggest going on trip to the library and finding the appropriate memory there. Harry and I can wait."

Snape screwed his eyes shut with incredulity. "That is...not possible. You have to be wrong."

She leaned into him, seething with annoyance. "I promise you, I am not. It seems someone has abused your trust."

Harry looked from one to the other, but both preferred glaring over speaking: the woman at Snape, and the latter at Harry. "What does that mean? What's so important on March 15th, 2670?"

Young Snape massaged his mouth with his fingertips. He seemed only moments from either spitting or being sick. "Tell him, Marion. What could possibly be so important about a date over _seven centuries from now?"_

Marion rolled her shoulders and approached him. She held his gaze, perhaps used to being the dreaded messenger.

"Harry."

"Yes, ma'am?" In all honestly, she wasn't much older than either Snape or himself; still, he showed his respect. She hesitated, cracked lips parted in surprise. Absently, she scratched a line of caked blood on her cheek with an overgrown fingernail; her face lost some of its immobility and imitated grim apology.

"This is markedly harder to say then I might have anticipated." Snape snorted. "Quiet. It was easier when I thought he'd be a brat about it."

Harry grew steadily more worried. Was the problem really so insurmountable? Did the world end in seven centuries, and he was somehow at fault? Was he banded from life for a crime he'd yet to indirectly commit?

"I'm...sorry, for having to tell you this. March 15th, 2670 is an appointment of sorts." Her arms, formerly at her side, crossed against her chest again. "There is-generally speaking, of course, there is _generally- _a grace period before a soul is allowed to return to life. The end date is different for every soul, usually as a fail safe against necromancers raising armies of the dead whenever they pleased. Erm. That used to be a terrible problem, actually, starting in the latter half of the fifteenth century-"

"You're babbling." Snape did not discriminate when making fools of people.

"_I know that I'm-_" Marion closed her eyes and collected herself. When she opened them again, he knew what she saw in his face: blatant, even willing, misunderstanding. She couldn't possibly be implying-

"Harry."

He couldn't look away from her troubled form. "Yes?"

"Due to some _complications_ with the crossroads' output, you cannot be resurrected until we earn back all of the energy lost. As such, your grace period is predicted to last six hundred seventy-one years and ten months."

"A more realistic estimate, in real time, is roughly seven hundred years. Would you like to sit down, Potter?"

Harry looked from one to the other. Both were watching him now, in unequal parts distressed, anticipating an explosion. He blinked, observed their near identical faces, wondering at how he was meant to respond.

_Seven hundred years? He couldn't return yet, not for...seven centuries, trapped in an approximation of Snape's life. _

_Trapped. Drifting. _

"_From Hell to Purgatory..."_

_Seven hundred years._

He understood slowly, then all at once.

* * *

"YOU BASTARD."

Severus jumped, ripped from his thoughts by his charge hurtling towards him.

"YOU KNEW." He did not, in fact, know, but figured it would hardly matter. Potter was in a frothing rage. "You _knew _I'd be stuck here! You brought me right into a trap, you _spiteful bastard."_

"Potter, get a hold of yourself! I had no idea-" He was cut off by the hard shove into the piano bench.

"Liar! You had to have known. _You had to._"

He landed with his arse across the keys in a tuneless clamor. The strings were years gone without maintenance, and one such wire snapped and snapped across his back. Severus shouted, arching up and pitching forward. The sharp rush of endorphins made him dizzy, aggravated, and when he registered Potter just a few feet away, hurled his clenched fist into the Boy-Who-Lived's nose.

It gave with a wet crunch of cartilage and bone. Slick warmth ran over his fingers and a red satisfaction took hold. Sev had always been fixated with the idea of breaking another boy's nose, of sending him sprawling. However, for Potter, the broken nose drove his senseless anger further. He responded in kind, blow for blow, and within minutes of speaking, Marion had to force the two bloody teenagers into opposite corners of the room.

The permanently setting sun shown in from the filmy window, illuminating motes of flotsam. The sitting room wasn't particularly large-its moderate space was filled with period furniture. Sev could hear the pair whispering in the corner about as well as he could in their company.

"Hold still. It needs healing."

"You hab a wad?"

"Of course. I practice magic, same as you. There, now your hand."

"You're obviously not Snape. Or a Snape. All the versions of him are bitter and violent."

"I'm exceptionally bitter. I have simply learned to channel that energy into more deserving targets than strangers and schoolchildren. Sev is actually the least violent of us, if the most disappointing."

The simple declaration rankled. He barked: "To hell with you, turncoat."

He saw her shrug from across the room.

"Why does he have a woman in his head? You're not his mom."

"You sound certain. What could you know about his mother?"

"I've seen a picture of her in an old Hogwarts log, during sixth year."

"Have you? Did she looks as sour faced as I remember her? Bless her shriveled heart. You shouldn't feel any pain, though there will be some stiffness."

"This is ridiculous. Nothing here makes sense-not a single, damn thing. I'm a detached soul, dead in spiritual nowhere. I've no bones to break, but that prick can do this."

Severus chuckled humorlessly. "Alright there, Potter? Has the good doctor done her duty?"

"Don't talk to me."

"You need to talk to him eventually, Harry. He is in charge of your visit."

"He did this on purpose. Don't tell me he didn't! It's exactly the type of thing he'd do, to make everyone around him as jaded and miserable as he is. You live with him or something like-you know he hates me with everything in his pitiful, black heart."

Severus rolled his eyes to the ceiling. "Honestly, Potter, how can one person be so criminally self-centered?"

"Fuck off, Snape."

"From my own mind? Really? You are so much the definition of 'arrogant' that you should replace it in all records of written English."

"You want to spite me! Ever since my father, you've wanted-"

"Extending your sentence would mean suffering your presence. I'd sooner wish immortality upon you, so as to be rid of you in the afterlife. I would _sell myself_ to see you gone."

"You might do, Severus."

Both he and Potter focused on Marion, wiping her hands on her sleep clothes. The smears of rusty brown were gory brushstrokes on an assemblage of white and black. Unfazed by the mess she made of herself, she seemed the picture of cold reservation.

"A solution might exist if you take your assignment seriously."

"What are you on about?"

"The nature of the output problem is a matter of proper compensation. The possibility of success is a sliver about zero."

_I should have heard about complications earlier, if the situation was so dire. Seven hundred years don't just disappear from the crossroads without warning._

Severus stepped up to her. She stared him down as he did her. His charge tensed, still dirty with blood and contempt; ready for another confrontation, even on Marion's behalf.

_The boy grows disgustingly more heroic every minute._

"You have yet to explain this sudden issue with output, woman. I am beginning to wonder if it actually exists, and if it is as much of a crisis as you've made it out to be."

"It isn't a crisis, Severus. It isn't a leak, or an accident. It was intelligently done. Frankly, it was a conspiracy. Mr. Potter was robbed."

"Explain."

She tilted her head toward the piano bench. He expanded it to accommodate the both of them; Potter stayed in his corner. "An inhabitant of the crossroads redistributed the stores by resurrecting a great many more souls than was originally intended."

"Be more specific. How much is a 'great many'? Five, six? A dozen?"

She looked at him askance. "Eighty-two."

He stared, at her, then at Potter, then her again. "You've miscounted."

"I redid the numbers four times. Eighty-two human souls, all brought back shortly before midnight. Dozens of grace periods, bypassed. Centuries worth of quintessence, spent. What little might have done to bring Harry back was used in saving one Severus Tobias Snape. The entire production schedule had to be rerouted. Unless you are inclined to die for the cause, Harry waits."

He swore. Eighty-two souls, resurrected in one day: it covered the entire body count of May 2nd, bar none; Light and Dark casualties, and then some. It was a coup.

"This had to be orchestrated. That many souls cannot strut out of the afterlife, through a guarded door, without a ferryman."

"The matter is being investigated. I left my post to inform 'it' of Death's decision to shut down output until the stores are replenished by enough souls crossing over."

"That...that will take a third World War. You can't be serious!" His tone forewent sarcastic and approached frantic. He was not beyond configuring ways to forfeit the life of Severus T. Snape, but the decision was not his alone to make. He would have to assemble every memory in the crossroads. It could mean the death of the inner children, the aspirations, the social roles, the personal identities; conflicting factions, not to mention emotions like the grudge or the elusive sympathy.

All together, it would mean bringing a small, shattered country to reach a consensus: a nation-wide suicide pact. He asked Marion to contemplate the enormity of that.

She shrugged. "If you can't do it, then he has to wait."

"We can open the door ourselves. Why not?"

"It is locked from the other side, and you will be murdered for trying. You would do best to accept the bureaucracy for what it is. The queue for resurrection stretches over millennia. It has essentially become an itinerary for reincarnation, and Mr. Potter is near the top of the list."

"Perhaps, when output starts again, enough people will have died from the Dark Lord's reign that Potter could get him on the third try, hmm?"

Marion remained unimpressed.

"I hear the third is charmed."

* * *

Hours later had the three by the window seat, with its yellow, pilled cushion and moth eaten drapes. Harry sat on the floor, with his hands in his hair; Marion perched on the seat itself, worrying the bridge of her nose; young Snape slumped beside her, picking at the paint from the sill.

"Again. Explain it in a way that I can understand."

Snape propped his head on his hand. "Shall I draw you a picture, then?"

_It couldn't hurt. _Harry had reached the point of considering even Snape's more sardonic suggestions. After the panic ebbed, the numb shock faded, and the violent rage subsided, he found himself wading through indecipherable confusion. He wanted to know the extent of the "complications" tying him to Snape like a kite on a string. Despite his desire to understand, he only heard Marion's attempts to teach as backwards equations and diminishing hope.

"Harry, I'm not sure what confuses you."

"_Don't _say 'everything'. I can practically hear you saying it. No educator enjoys hearing 'everything' in tutoring sessions. It turns teaching dunderheads like you into lessons in patience."

"You could stand to learn patience, Snape. It could become another memory: you, with a greasy, white beard and a robe down to your bony, yellow toes, calmly reciting the virtues of pewter cauldrons over bronze."

"Fancy another broken nose? It would certainly employ some of your grace period. Oh, no, Marion, do go on teaching him. By the time he understands simple maths, it'll be Boxing Day of 2669."

The older woman sighed and lifted the hem of her gown to scratch her ankles. They were as slim as her wrists-hardly a thumb and a forefinger in girth. The bones of her feet pressed against the stretch of skin alongside cords of tendons. Watching the macabre dance of her flexing feet, he felt the lessons slide into place.

"It's lifespans," he said, looking from her feet to the crease in her brow. "The energy that you've been talking about makes up people's lifespans."

"Yes, Harry. I thought you absorbed that without issue." Her eyes were heavy on him. Marion did not blink, as a force of habit. The steady coldness of her stare would become part of the nightmarish Potions Master, he knew. Much more so than young Snape's eyes, hers gave the impression of reading his mind.

Suddenly nervous, he shifted his weight. Freeing a hand, he flattened his fringe against his forehead, effectively hiding his scar.

"The 'output' you keep talking about is the lifespans of eighty plus wizarding folks, yeah?"

"Yes," Snape hissed.

"So, how is the wait time not centuries longer? A wizard can live to about two hundred years, and the grace period is barely worth three wizards and a pet cat."

"The boy has a point."

"That he does," Marion said. "The input to output ratio in any crossroads changes from epoch to epoch, balancing modern medical feats; new dangers caused by technological advances; the prevalence of common dangers, such as wars on any scale, pandemics, genocide-"

"Consolidate! Merlin, take a bloody breath."

"Death takes a portion of time from chance encounters. Near-death experiences described as 'taking years off' of one's life do that, in spades. Early demises are suitable time deposits-being lifespan minus actual years lived-making wars wells for unspent years. Essentially, all of the time brought into a crossroads is stored into the 'reservoir', as you call it, and withdrawn as needed."

Harry stewed for a moment; then he simplified:

_Somewhere in the aether, there is a bank that stores time and gives time loans; it's run by Death and every person in existence has an account. A ghostly rogue robbed the bank and gave handouts to the recently deceased, who bought their lives back and left not one bronze Knut to fund my quest. _

He supposed he felt cheated, but if Snape meant what he said, then his friends were given a second chance. This also made his returning impossibly more vital. Defeating Voldemort saved both the people that survived and those who had benefited from an exceptional circumstance. A handful of families were being stitched back together in the overworld. He had no choice but to protect them.

_I didn't come this far to heed someone else's rules._

"Marion?"

"Hmm?"

"You said earlier that the exit would be locked from the outside. That means someone in the living world can open it."

"That isn't-you make it sound much easier than it is. Firstly, the lock is complicated in a way that only Death and the dead can stand to fathom. Living people can't even _see _it, much less touch it."

"Can a ghost do it?"

"In theory, yes."

Snape frowned at his reflection in the window pane. "What are you plotting, Potter?"

"Only what's necessary, sir, but I'll need your help. About my grace period: you said death makes up for the deficit."

Marion shook her head, taking up Snape's frown."You cannot simply will people dead to feed your own lifespan. Never mind the moral implications: the collection of time happens at its own pace. Besides, your projected life spans more than a couple of centuries. Saying nothing of the future, you are a powerful wizard with a deep well of magic to keep you alive. That takes more than a few deaths to satisfy."

Harry refused discouragement. A plan had begun to form in his mind, and while it was undoubtedly, wholeheartedly insane, it had, by his estimation, the best chance at success.

"What if I sacrifice my magic?"

"I-" Marion shut herself up, sensing the effect her opinion would have. Little did she know, his mind had already been made up.

Snape turned from the window, and Harry was soon locked in a double black stare.

"Potter, no. Absolutely not."

"I'll have a shorter life, which means less sacrifice. If I give up my magic, it'll cut my lifespan in half."

Marion unclenched; her eyes were dark and judging. "A third, actually."

"I hear the third's the charm."

* * *

"Idiot_. _A Muggle can't defeat the Dark Lord. You would do better waiting for reincarnation."

"I thought you were joking about that."

"This half-sketched plan of yours is the joke, Potter. I'll have no part in it."

"Snape," he said, climbing to his feet. "Snape, have an open mind. You know this could work. If I give up part of my magic-"

"You aren't listening-"

"-and if you let go of my lifeline, I can become a ghost, travel to the living world-"

"You've taken leave of all sense-"

"-I'll unlock the door on the other side, come through it again, and meet you here. You escort me properly me to my body, tie me in, and I fight Voldemort."

"You. Are. Moronic. With thoughts like that, you deserve to float away and wander the earth for the rest of known eternity. There are so many holes, I can't even begin to-"

Marion held up a finger for silence and counted off the aforementioned holes.

"Harry, Severus is right.

"As an energy, magic isn't as stable as time. All of your magic, strong as it is, will only supplement a sixth of your projected life. If you fail to find a proper sacrifice, you could die as soon as you're revived. Say you circumvent that: if you lack sufficient magic, you will be killed in battle.

"You might not even make it to that stage if you fail to unlock the door; in this case, you stay a ghost, indefinitely. Or, even if you manage the lock, make it to your body, survive battle, and defeat the Dark Lord, you will live significantly less than any of your loved ones, even the terminally ill.

"The only perfect solution would be Severus, the greater, giving his life for yours-either this or a similar sacrifice. Otherwise, you should take his advice and wait it out..."

She trailed off, seeing the determination in his posture. He obviously wouldn't see reason. Sharing a look with Severus, Marion accepted that the best way to insure his safety and the success of his mission would be to help him to the best of her ability.

_This must be the lesson in befriending a compulsive hero._

"The plan...could work."

The attention of both boys intensified. Harry, excited; Severus, furious. She wrapped her arms around herself and spoke to a fleck of dirt below Harry's right ear. It had to be said.

"If we factor in the Horcrux in Harry's train station, that makes one seventh of a formidable, if much abused, human soul."

"Barely human soul, Marion. _Barely _human, flung from the sullied whole, and dying in a corner of the boy's mind. It can only be worth a handful of years, at most."

She calculated. "About fifty, which is a sneeze for wizards, but coupled with the ten or so from half of Harry's innate magic, that is a usable lifespan. He could live a life in seventy years; I have seen it done in less."

Harry paled some, but maintained his rigid bravado. Certainly an estimate of his life-and a generous one, at that-offered him a stunningly vivid perspective. His plan would seem of greater consequence. Severus, oddly enough, seemed to suffer from the same affliction of feeling. She hazarded a guess: Harry, as much as he despised him, was the summation of Sev's life's devotion; he was willing to die to see him triumph over the Dark Lord. It must have been a horror to see the life he had vowed to protect be bartered away and whittled to almost nothing.

_Needs must. _

"Fragments of the soul will do, yes? One of us can give him more time."

Neither she nor Harry had expected Severus to speak outside of admonishing them. The ferryman's contributing gave the plan a certain solidity. Harry lit up with fledgling confidence; her lips even threatened a smile. It felt like they could force victory by joint willpower, and the thrill of it was heady-literally, death defying.

"Whom would you suggest?" They may not have been able to force the consensus of an entire crossroads, but one memory, in a three-on-one configuration, might be amenable.

"I volunteer the grudge. Only you could match it for strength, and you need to coach Potter through picking the lock. I rival it in authority, but I am needed to reel him in. Those are our only options, by way of crossroad natives."

"How much time can the grudge give us?" Harry didn't seem overly guilty about letting it die. Having seen it for himself, she doubted he would.

"Another sixty to sixty-five years, give or take three. You could stand to give less of your magic and still have a decent lifespan."

"Less than half of his projected," Severus groused.

"It's a sight better than a magic-less one-sixth, Snape. I do believe we have the outline of a plan."

* * *

**A/N: It has been a month since I updated, and I apologize for that. Again, review if this confuses at all, and I'll do my best to explain without giving anything away. Otherwise, thanks for reading!  
**


End file.
